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Biblical and Oriental Series 


SAMUEL A. B. MERCER, General Editor 


THE RECOVERY 
OF FORGOTTEN EMPIRES 


‘Biblical and Oriental Series 


SAMUEL A. B. MERCER, General Editor 
The object of this Series on the Bible and Oriental 


Civilization is to make the results of expert investi- 
gation accessible to laymen. Sometimes these results 
will be presented in the form of daily readings, and 
sometimes in that of continuous discussion. Specialists 
in every case will be employed, who will endeavor to 
present their subjects in the most effective and profit- 
able way. 











THE Livinc RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 
By John A. Maynard 
THE Book or GENESIS FOR BIBLE CLASSES AND PRI- 
VATE STUDY 
By Samuel A. B. Mercer 
THE GrowTH oF RELicious AND Mora. IDEAS IN 
E.cypt 
By Samuel A. B. Mercer 
RELicious AND Mora IDEAS IN BABYLONIA AND As- 
SYRIA 
By Samuel A. B. Mercer 
LirE AND GROWTH oF ISRAEL 
By Samuel A. B. Mercer 
TUTANKHAMEN AND EcypTOLOGY 
By Samuel A. B. Mercer 
A Survey oF HEBREW EDUCATION 
By John A. Maynard 
THE RECOVERY OF ForRGOTTEN EMPIRES 
By Samuel A. B. Mercer 
THE BirtH oF JUDAISM 
By John A. Maynard (in preparation). 


MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING COMPANY 












— 


i 






THE RECOVER 
FORGOTTEN EM 


By 


SAMUEL A. B/MERCER, MAG) Ph.D5 D:D: 


Professor of Semitic Languages and Egyptology in Trinity College, 
University of Toronto; Rector of the Society of Oriental 
Research, and Editor of its Journal; Founder 
of the Anglican Theological Review 


MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 
MILWAUKEE, WIS. 


A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. 
LONDON 


COPYRIGHT BY 
MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 


1925 


TO . 
MY THURSDAY AFTERNOON CLASS IN TORONTO 
THIS LITTLE BOOK 
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/recoveryofforgotOOmerc 


CONTENTS 


Lema NPROD EC TIONG fio tis hy te ne Ge be 1 
II.—EXCAVATIONS AND THEIR ROMANCE D 


TI1.—DECIPHERMENT OF INSCRIPTIONS... 20) 
1V.—RECONSTRUCTION OF ANCIENT CIVILI- 
DATTA Oe a ATA Me die my gy 39 
V.—Co-ORDINATION OF THE CIVILIZATIONS 
or ANCIENT EMPIRES . . . 3. 59 
VI.—Owur INTEREST IN THE Past . .. . (3, 
VIT—Brrer BIsri0oGRAPHY 2) 0 3). U. oC 
VIII.—Lisr or ILLUSTRATIONS WITH DE- 
RORIETIONS © Siti te I metres oe wor he, LAD 





TX —INDEX 5 vee tie (a) Ue Ap aA ee ete were’ Bb 














Crevrge Suis Johar Henry Hay nen 


EAPLORERA AST TCTRHERERS 








PREFACE 


THE FIRST STEP in the Recovery of Forgotten 
IXmpires is the work of Excavation. Since the 
Great War a new era in archaeological excavation 
has dawned. Now that Palestine, Mesopotamia, 
and Egypt are either mandates of enlightened 
Western powers, or are under their influence and 
guidance, we may hope for unimpeded oppor- 
tunity for research. There is no limit to the pos- 
sibilities of important discoveries which may be 
forthcoming in Palestine, Babylonia, and Egypt. 

Already there are combined English and 
American expeditions working in Egypt and 
Mesopotamia, and English, American, French, 
and German archaeologists are working and 
planning for greater work in Palestine, while the 
land of the Hittites holds out many promises. 

Just at this point it is interesting to review 
What archaeologists, linguists, and historians 
have done in the way of recovery of the empires 
of the ancient Orient. That is the object of this 
little book. 

During the past two years, the author has lec- 
tured far and wide in the United States and in 
Canada. The lecture which seemed to draw forth 


x Forgotten Empires 


most interest and which was repeatedly asked 
for, was one entitled The Recovery of Forgotten 
Empires. The author was so frequently asked if 
it was in print that he has ventured so to render 
it, in order that those who kindly desired to read 
it may do so, and that it may be accessible to a 
wider circle of admirers of the ancient Orient. 

The purpose of the book is, first of all, to show 
how the past has been gradually recovered; and 
then to indicate how very much we modern peo- 
ple are the heirs of antiquity; and finally to 
emphasize the fact that just as astronomy teaches 
us the unity of God’s marvellous universe, so 
archaeology shows us that the human race is 
one great family and we are all brothers and 
sisters, children of our Heavenly Father. 

The author will feel amply rewarded if he has 
succeeded in making these points clear, and if, 
as a result, he will be instrumental in increasing 
and arousing new interest in and enthusiasm for 
the further work which still lies before us in com- 
pleting the recovery of forgotten empires. 

My thanks are due to my friend, Professor J. A. 
Maynard, for reading this book in proof. 

SAMUEL A. B. Mercer. 
Trinity College 
Toronto, Canada, 
March 1925. 








JEAN FRANCOIS HUGO WINCKLER 
CHAMPOLLION 











SIR GASTON MASPERO RH. AY H. SAYCH 
Fig. 2—EXPLORERS AND DECIPHERERS 








I. INTRODUCTION 


The age in which we live has been given various 
names. It has been called the Iron Age, the Age 
of Science, the Automobile Age, the Age of Re- 
search. It 1s also an Age of Recovery, and re- 
covery is Archaeology. For just as prophets have 
taught us to turn our eyes towards the future, 
so archaeologists have of late been teaching us 
that in order to know the present and prepare for 
the future we must study the past. 

In some respects archaeology is a new science. 
Tt is certainly an old discipline. The last king of 
ancient Babylonia was an ardent archaeologist. 
Indeed, if Nabonidus had not been so well 
wedded to this avocation, Cyrus might have 
found it more difficult to conquer Babylon. It 
was Nabonidus who, in his excavations in con- 
nection with the restoration of the temple of 
Marduk in Babylon, discovered the foundation 
deposit of an ancient king, Naram-Sin. He calcu- 
lated that it was 3,200 years between the time 
of Naram-Sin and the year in which he made his 
discovery. He was archaeologist enough to cause 
this calculation to be inscribed on a clay cylinder 
which is now in the British Museum. He is thus 
the Father of Archaeology. 


Z Forgotten Empires 


Herodotus has been called the “Father of His- 
tory,” but much of his work was that of an 
archaeologist. The same may be said of Manetho 
and of many others throughout the centuries, 
such as Josephus, Eusebius, Marco Polo, Ibn 
Batuta, Odoricus, Niebuhr, who interested them- 
selves travelling, collecting, and writing, in order 
to make the past live anew. 

With Schliemann, Botta, Rawlinson, Layard, 
Lepsius, and Mariette a new era of archaeology 
dawned, until now archaeology takes its place 
among the sciences. In preparing today for 
archaeological exploration quite as much careful 
and scientific precaution is taken as astronomers 
and geologists take in preparing for important 
astronomical observation and geological research. 
A well equipped archaeological party must in- 
clude in its number not only experienced archae- 
ological field workers but also an engineer, a 
photographer, a draughtsman, a linguist, a his- 
torian, and if possible, a chemist and an architect. 
The task is to take note of everything no matter 
how insignificant, for everything will find its 
place in the reconstructed picture of the past 
which it is the duty of the party, so far as possi- 
ble, to present. 

Nor is the work of the archaeologist tedious, 
dry, or uninteresting. There is a romance about 
it that is thrilling, for it partakes of the fasci- 
nation of exploration, the charm of travel, the 
thrill of discovery, and the mystery of detection. 


Introduction 3 


The archaeologist must be a man of imagination 
and vision. He must have an imagination capable 
of arranging the details of the political, religious, 
social, and domestic life of ancient peoples, and 
a vision capable of seeing a panorama of the life 
and thought of ancient peoples and civilizations. 
The world is interesting because of the men and 
women who live in it, and the past is interesting 
because of what men and women have loved and 
done. And the life we live and of which we are 
a part, this multitudinous complexity of things, 
is eloquent of bygone days and is what it is be- 
cause of its heritage from the mighty past. There 
is no nobler subject with which the mind of man 
can interest itself than a contemplation of the 
course of events which lead back into the deepest 
ages of the past. The recovery of forgotten em- 
pires, then, is a task which, while unproductive 
commercially, is one of the noblest that can 
occupy the time and attention of man. It is not 
creative in the sense that poetry is, nor is it con- 
structive as is the study of science, but it ap- 
peals to and makes use of man’s highest facul- 
ties, and it often furnishes the material without 
which poetry and science could accomplish but 
little. The recoverers of forgotten empires bring 
us face to face with ancient poets, astronomers, 
merchants and lawyers, artists and engineers, 
and make them and their work live and move 
again before our eyes. 

During the past century archaeology has been 


4 Forgotten Empires 


recoveriug many empires forgotten, some of 
them, for thousands of years. The ancient 
Minoans, the Hittites, the Etruscans, the Amur- 
ru, the Incas, and Mayas are all the object of 
archaeological exploration. It would take many 
books to tell about the various activities of mod- 
ern archaeologists. This little book must have its 
limitations. It will be confined to a brief sketch 
of the way in which the mightiest empires of 
the ancient world have been recovered—Sumeria, 
Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt. The work has 
been long and tedious, but it has had a romance 
all its own. To see again the mighty temples and 
dazzling palaces of Egypt and Assyria and to 
read again the histories, stories, poems, and 
hymns of the sages of the ancient Oriental 
world would, in itself, repay untold time and 
energy in the work of recovery. The long proces- 
sion of thinkers and artists of Babylonia and 
Kgypt stretching back into the fourth millenium 
before the beginning of our era, six thousand 
vears ago, is the recovery achieved by modern 
archaeologists. These ancient peoples, as well as 
the life and civilization of their times, have been 
made to live again, and a contemplation of them 
is fascinating and thrilling. 


Il. EXCAVATIONS AND THEIR ROMANCE 


Interest in the ancient past and its recovery 
was first aroused by travellers. From the time 
of the wandering friar, Odoricus, 1320, until 
that of Karstens Niebuhr, 1765, the Arabian 
traveller, many sightseers in the East had re- 
turned to Europe with stories of ruined temples, 
rock inscriptions, and buried cities which were 
of sufficient romance to kindle the imagination 
of the most phlegmatic. The magic names of 
Baghdad, Babylon, Nineveh, and Thebes, to- 
gether with the travellers’ experiences, were 
thrilling. 

Some of the most industrious of such travel- 
lers would often make sketches of the strange 
things they had seen and would copy bits of 
drawings or strange scripts that were often ob- 
served on walls and monuments. These sketches 
sometimes fell into the hands of linguists and 
philologists. Thus, for example, the German phil- 
ologist Tychsen, 1798, using copies of inscrip- 
tions drawn by Niebuhr, made the first real step 
towards the decipherment of the scripts of an- 
cient Sumeria, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia, 
which is now known as cuneiform (wedge-form 


6 Forgotten Empires 


writing). He discovered the mark which sepa- 
rates words in cuneiform as well as the equiva- 
lent of the vowel “a” and of the consonant ‘b’’. 
It was likewise the linguist Champollion of 
France who, in 1822, on the basis of copies of 
the ancient Egyptian script, did much towards 
establishing the key to the Egyptian hiero- 
elyphics. 

Rawlinson of England, 1810-1895, is perhaps 
the best example of one who, as traveller and 
linguist, inspired deep interest in Oriental mat- 
ters and also made an incomparable contribu- 
tion towards the interpretation of the ancient 
cuneiform. 

The first great step, however, in the recovery 
of forgotten empires is the work of excavation, 
that is, the laying bare of cities, temples, pal- 
aces and walls bearing inscriptions and sculp- 
tured, carved, and painted scenes of the life and 
civilization of the past. 

In the Tigris-Kuphrates valley, the home of 
ancient Sumeria, Babylonia, and Assyria, the re- 
mains of these ancient civilizations were buried 
under the sands of the ages. Great mounds scat- 
tered along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates 
rivers contained the buried remains of antiquity. 
It was a Frenchman, Botta, in 1842, who made 
the first attack upon the mounds of the valley 
of the Tigris-Euphrates. On the mounds opposite 
Mosul on the Tigris he began his. work. These 
mounds covered a portion of the ancient city of 


Excavations and Their Romance 7 


Nineveh. At first excavation was largely guess- 
work as to where to dig the first trenches, and 
it depended upon chance as to whether one’s 
efforts were to be rewarded with tangible results. 
But Botta persisted. Inscriptions and bas-reliefs 
were found, walls and monuments were uncoy- 
ered. He was assisted by the artist Flandin who 
sketched the monuments and drew plans of the 
excavations. Botta had discovered a palace, that 
of none other than Sargon II, who destroyed 
Samaria and carried away into captivity the ten 
tribes of Israel. The reports of the discovery of 
this ancient palace, whose walls were covered 
with inscriptions and pictures describing in de- 
tail the military, social, domestic, and religious 
life of ancient Assyria, created tremendous ex- 
citement. What romance to see one by one the 
figures of ancient kings and personages known 
to us from the pages of Holy Writ arise out of 
the sands of the ages, telling us their story of 
love and life and action! European governments 
were electrified. The French Assembly in 1851 
voted to fit out an expedition which was placed 
under the leadership of M. Place, a_ trained 
architect. He succeeded not only in finishing the 
work of Botta but also in excavating Sargon’s 
fortified city, as well as other famous cities, such 
as Assyria’s first capital, Ashur, and the ancient 
city of Calah. . 

Years before Botta began his work a young 
Englishman, Layard, a student of law, had come 


8 Forgotten Empires 


under the spell of the Arabian Nights. He longed 
to see Baghdad and Babylon, Mosul, and the rest 
of the ancient East. He ran away from home, 
and after some strange and romantic experi- 
ences, crossing the desert and making his way 
on the ancient rivers by means of rafts and the 
native round-boat, he visited the mounds of Mo- 
sul. Five years later he found himself, with a 
small fund at his disposal, at the head of a mod- 
est expedition and working at _Nimrud, the 
modern site of the ancient city of Calah. Here 
Layard made some remarkable discoveries. In a 
palace erected, in part, by Shalmaneser III of 
Assyria he found one of the most striking monu- 
ments ever unearthed. It was an obelisk of hard, 
black stone, covered with five rows of sculptures 
running around the four sides of the monument, 
while the balance of the space was covered with 
closely written cuneiform inscriptions. The 
scenes portrayed Shalmaneser receiving tribute 
from conquered nations. Later it was learned 
that one of the conquered kings portrayed on the 
obelisk was Jehu, king of Israel, 842. Thus scep- 
tics, who declared that, unless some extra-biblical 
evidence was forthcoming, all Old Testament 
narratives must be declared fictitious, received 
all and more than they wanted. Here was not 
only an inscription telling of Jehu’s conquest by 
Shalmaneser, but even giving a picture—a con- 
temporaneous one—of Jehu himself. It can be 
easily imagined what an impression this made 





Excavations and Their Romance 9 


upon the Western world. Money poured in, the 
British Museum voted funds, and a well equipped 
expedition was sent out under Layard’s leader- 
ship. This time he was assisted by a native 
Christian, Rassam, and among the results was 
the discovery of the palace of Sennacherib, the 
king who attacked Jerusalem in 701, and that of 
Ashurbanipal, the greatest of all Assyrian kings, 
the Asnapper of the Old Testament. Besides the 
usual bas-reliefs and huge winged bulls, the 
cherubim of Genesis, there was discovered the 
now famous library of Ashurbanipal, rooms 
filled with many thousands of clay tablets con- 
taining literary works as well as the official 
archives of the Assyrian empire. 

Near about the same time similar work was 
being dene on the mounds of still more ancient 
cities. An Englishman, W. K. Loftus, in 1850- 
1854, opened trenches in a series of mounds at 
Warka, the ancient Erech, where he found an 
ancient zikkurat or “Tower of Babel.” It was 
here, in 1912, that the German Oriental Society 
excavated a great temple dedicated to the god- 
dess Nana, the Ishtar of the Old Testament. 
Loftus also excavated the ancient city of Larsa, 
thought to be the Ellasar of Genesis and the seat 
of the worship of the sun-god, whose temple and 
zikkurat were objects of veneration throughout 
all periods of Babylonian history. 

A second French expedition under Fresnel and 
Oppert excavated the famous palace of Nebu- 


10 Forgotten Empires 


chadnezzar, the conquerer of Jerusalem in 586. 
Another Englishman, J. EK. Taylor, now attacked 
the mounds of Mugheir, which proved to be the 
site of ancient Ur, the home of Abraham. Here 
the temple of Sin, the moon-god, was unearthed 
and the worship to which Abraham was opposed 
has been studied on the basis of these and other 
discoveries. 

Although the fame of Sir Henry Rawlinson 
rests primarily upon his linguistic work, his suc- 
cessful excavations on the site of ancient Bor- 
Ssippa cannot be omitted. It was here that the zik- 
kurat, usually indentified with the Tower of Ba- 
bel, was found. 

For about twenty years after Rawlinson’s de- 
parture from Baghdad in 1854, no excavations 
were carried on in Babylonia or Assyria. It was 
perhaps just as well, for it gave excavators and 
linguists a chance to get together and work on 
the inscriptions. This will occupy our thought in 
the next chapter. And as it is not our purpose to 
give a history of Oriental excavations it may be 
briefly said that from about 1870 until our own 
day marvellous discoveries have been made al- 
most continuously, except during the Great War, 
by English, French, German, and American 
archaeologists in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. 
The history of these excavations makes fascinat- 
ing reading, and one can imagine nothing more 
dramatic and romantic than the discovery of the 
Babylonian accounts of Creation and the Flood, 


Excavations and Their Romance 11 


of the uncovering of ancient cities, such as 
Lagash and Kish, whose histories extend back 
over six thousand years, of the discovery of the 
archives and ledgers of the business house of 
Murashu and Sons, and of the discovery of the 
great Hammurabi Code of Laws, the most an- 
cient and the most famous in the world. These 
and many other discoveries, not to mention the 
hundreds of thousands of inscriptions, tell a 
story that in sheer human interest would exceed 
the most stirring tales of travel and adventure. 
Since the earliest times Egypt has always been 
the land of mystery and romance. The pages of 
Herodotus are never fuller or more vivid than 
when he is telling of Egypt. But the modern 
world was first really awakened to the wonders 
of Egypt, the richness of her life and civilization, 
by no less a person than the great Napoleon him- 
self. In 1798 Napoleon and his army were en- 
camped in the shadow of the great pyramid. 
Napoleon had taken with him not only warriors 
but savants, the result of whose activities was 
the publication of a colossal work in twelve vol- 
umes of plates and twenty-four of text. This is 
the famous Description de VEgypte, edited by 
Vivant Denon. As the remains of Egypt’s ancient 
past had not been so completely buried under the 
debris and sands of time as had those of Baby- 
lonia and Assyria, the work of excavation has 
been a simpler one; although the great royal 
tombs with their wealth of picture and writing, 


12 Forgotten Empires 


hundreds of feet, some of them, into the solid 
rock, have tested the skill and endurance of the 
excavator. But until the time of the Frenchman 
Mariette, 1849, not much systematic work of ex- 
cavation had been done. International strifes 
and jealousies, intensified by a desire to possess 
the great standing remains of ancient Egyptian 
civilization, added to the difficulty in accomplish- 
ing anything of a systematic character in Egypt. 
Men of undiscriminating zeal, such as Belzoni, 
Drovetti, and others destroyed more than they 
preserved in their endeavour to purchase ‘ob- 
jects” for the great European Museums. Before 
the work of Mariette, however, we must mention 
that of Rosellini and Champollion in 1828, who 
made a second great general survey of the monu- 
ments, and that of Lepsius in 1837, who, as a re- 
sult of his work, published in 1849-1858 his fa- 
mous Denkmialer. 

With Auguste Mariette, a brilliant French 
archaeologist, the period of superficial archae- 
ology in Egypt came to an end. Now began the 
excavations. Mariette’s first great work was the 
excavation of the great Serapeum, the Apis- 
cemetary, with the temple of Osiris-Apis and its 
avenue of sphinxes. Mariette was now appointed 
head of the Service of Antiquities and began his 
formation of the Cairo Museum. Apart from his 
activities at the Serapeum and in the necropolis 
at Saqqara, his great work of excavation was the 
uncovering at Abydos of the noble temple of 


Excavations and Their Romance bs: 


Seti I with its exquisite reliefs and its great in- 
scriptions. To him also we owe the excavation of 
the great temple of Rameses III at Medinet Habu 
and a part of that of Hatshepsut which contains 
the famous reliefs of the royal expedition to the 
Land of Punt. 

But modern scientific archaeology in Egypt 
had to wait for still another French genius, Gas- 
ton Maspero. In 1881 Maspero succeeded Mari- 
ette and, under his direction and inspiration, 
Egyptian archaeology prospered. About the same 
time Petrie made a complete survey of the Gizeh 
field and the great Pyramids, the wonders of the 
world, the most recent work on them being that 
of George Reisner of Harvard University. Mas- 
pero himself opened the Pyramid of Unas at 
Saqqara, which gave rise to the publication of 
the famous Pyramid Texts, which are so valuable 
for a study of ancient Egyptian religion. 

In 1883 the English Egypt Exploration Fund 
was founded, and since that time similar socie- 
ties for the excavation of ancient sites in Egypt 
have been founded in Germany, Switzerland, 
America, and elsewhere. 

Maspero, assisted by Loret, in 1881 discovered 
the royal mummies, among them being Rameses 
II, the pharaoh of the Hebrew oppression in 
Egypt. Not only have we, then, many portrait 
statues of the pharaoh of biblical interest, but 
we also have his mummy, and can look upon his 
very countenance. 


14 Forgotten Empires 


Among the thrilling discoveries made in an- 
cient Egypt nothing has contributed more to- 
wards an understanding of the ancient Oriental 
world than the Tell el-Amarna Letters discov- 
ered by a peasant woman in 1891. These letters 
were written to and by Egyptian pharaohs of 
the fourteenth century before our era, and kings 
of Babylonia, Assyria, and the Hittite Empire, 
and Egyptian governors of the land of Canaan. 
They give us a most interesting picture of what 
Palestine was about two hundred years before 
the time of Moses, and they help us to under- 
stand what the land of Canaan was like where 
Abraham sojourned and where the Hebrews 
found a home after the time of Joshua. 

Then came the excavation of the Labyrinth of 
Herodotus by Petrie, and the interesting mummy 
portraits of Roman Egypt, examples of the 
earliest oil paintings in the world. In 1894 De 
Morgan explored the Pyramids of Dashur, 
twelfth and thirteenth century pyramids, and 
discovered a piece of jewelry, the Pectoral of 
Usertsen II, unrivalled among ancient works of 
art, Next year Amélineau began a work which 
was continued by Petrie and Naville, namely, 
the excavation of the Royal Tombs at Abydos. 
In 1896 Petrie was fortunate enough to discover 
the famous Israel Stela of Merneptah, pharaoh 
of the Exodus. This monument is of importance 
for the light it throws upon the date of the Ex- 
odus as well as for the fact that on it we find 


Excavations and Their Romance 15 


the earliest occurrence of the word “Israel.” 
Many other important discoveries have been 
made in Egypt, among them being the Tombs of 
the Kings at Thebes, the so-called “Tomb of 
Osiris” at Abydos, the Aramaic Papyri at Ele- 
phantiné, which so wonderfully contribute to 
Jewish history of the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, 
and Nayille’s work on the great temple of Der el 
Bahari. 

The most spectacular of all Oriental excava- 
tions began in 1922, when the Earl of Carnarvon 
and Howard Carter charmed and fascinated the 
whole world by the discovery and excavation of 
Tutankhamen’s tomb. 

The latest and most far-reaching of all recoy- 
eries of forgotten empires is the recovery of the 
ancient Empire of the Hittites which is just now 
going on before our eyes. As early as 1722 a 
French traveller, La Roque, observed some curi- 
ously engraved stones at Hamath in Northern 
Syria. A century later Burchardt saw also at 
Hamath in the corner of a house in the Bazaar 
a stone with a number of figures and signs which 
he considered a kind of hieroglyphic. Another 
half century elapsed when, in 1870, two Ameri- 
‘ans found some inscribed stones at Hamath, and 
when William Wright, an English missionary at 
Damascus, 1872, began a serious study of the sub- 
ject. Then followed a series of travellers who 
made reports, from time to time, of objects seen 
or acquired in Syria and Eastern Asia Minor. 


16 Forgotten Empires 


But the first really important stage in the re- 
covery of this forgotten empire was when Hugo 
Winckler of Berlin, in 1906, began excavating 
the mounds of Boghazk6i, the capital of the an- 
cient Empire of the Hittites. The results of his 
excavations were beyond expectation. He found 
what was perhaps the state archives containing 
about 20,000 documents written in Babylonian 
cuneiform on clay tablets. A study of these tab- 
lets reveals the fact that they are the remains of 
an ancient people called the Hatti, the Kheta of 
the Egyptian monuments, and the Hittites of the 
Old Testament. Soon after his great discovery 
Winckler fell ill, and from then until his death 
shortly before the outbreak of the Great War, 
practically nothing was done, for students were 
awaiting Winckler’s publication of the material. 
Then came the war which gave rise to further 
delay. However, in 1916-1917 Hrozny published a 
brilliant discussion of the texts, and the work is 
still in progress. This will be further referred to 
in our next chapter, on decipherment. 

Thus we have followed, in the briefest of out- 
lines, some of the most important steps in the 
progress made, from the beginning to our own 
day, by archaeologists, of laying bare the re- 
mains of mighty empires that had lived thou- 
sands of years and had passed away. Their works 
had been forgotten for close on two thousand 
years. And then came modern adventurers, ex- 
plorers, excavators, archaeologists, and by per- 


Excavations and Their Romance Le 


sistence, hard work, good fortune, and the love of 
ancient humanity, have made these peoples and 
times live again and tell us of their lives and 
works, their plans and purposes, their ideals and 
aspirations. And how much like our own they 
are! What a unity the human race has been 
found to be! 

And now the Romance of these excavations! 
Stories of adventure thrill us. We never forget 
Robinson Crusoe. The thought of an exploration 
trip small or large fascinates us. We read with 
bated breath detective stories. Now, it is not too 
much to say that the elements of adventure, ex- 
ploration, and detection are all to be found to a 
remarkable degree in the work of archaeology. 
Excavations have their disappointments just as 
some explorations fail to accomplish much. Lord 
Carnarvon spent about twenty years turning over 
a hundred thousand tons of debris without re- 
sult—a long, tedious, expensive, discouraging 
thing. And it was only just on the eve of aban- 
doning his search that the discovery was made 
which resounded from north to south, from east 
to west, of the civilized world, and electrified 
the hearts and imaginations of millions of people. 

The Romance of Excavations! Some people see 
in a rose merely a flower, in a snowflake merely 
a bit of frozen moisture. Others see in the rose 
a thing of infinite wonder and beauty, and in the 
snowflake a marvel of nature’s symmetrical per- 
fection. Some may see in cuneiform or hiero- 


18 Forgotten Empires 


glyphic merely another form of. human script, 
others of vision and imagination see in them the 
life and civilization, the history and poetry, the 
literature and religion, the tragedy and comedy 
of myriads of human lives and hearts who lived 
and loved, who thought and worked, in far off 
times and places. 

The Romance of Excavations tells of Egypt, 
Sumeria, Babylonia, Assyria, and the Empire of 
the Hittites. It speaks to us of the Rosetta Stone 
and the decipherment of the hieroglyphics of 
Egypt, of “Cleopatra’s Needle” in Central Park, 
New York, on the Thames Embankment, before 
St. John Lateran or in Constantinople. It speaks 
to us of the mighty pyramids, the glorious pal- 
aces, the wondrous temples of Luxor and Karnak. 
It speaks of Heliopolis and Memphis, of Thebes 
and Babylon, and all the glory and wonder of 
such ancient cities. The romance of excavations 
thrilled Napoleon and Champollion, Mariette and 
Maspero, Lepsius and Naville, Carnarvon, and 
many others who have consecrated their lives 
and brilliant talents, not to commerce and 
finance, but to the sacred task of quickening hu- 
man life by deepening its consciousness of what 
it owes to the ancient past. It speaks to us too 
of Layard, the boy of vision, and of Nineveh, the 
home of Assyria’s ancient splendours. It speaks 
of Ur of the Chaldees and of Abraham the man 
of faith, of Hammurabi and his mighty laws, of 
Jehu and of Sennacherib, of Ephron the Hittite, 


Excavations and Their Romance 19 


and of the mighty Nebuchadnezzar whom Daniel 
knew. Of these, and vastly more, has archaeology 
told us. It has kindled our imagination, broad- 
ened our vision, intensified our sympathy, and 
deepened our faith in our kind. It is difficult to 
imagine anyone who is at all interested in the 
finer and nobler things of life, with soul so dead 
as not to understand what is meant by the ro- 
mance of the recovery of forgotten empires. 


Ill. DECIPHERMENT OF INSCRIPTIONS 


THE SECOND STEP in the recovery of forgotten 
empires is the decipherment of the script and the 
translation of the language. The story of the de- 
cipherment of ancient inscriptions is one of the 
most fascinating that has ever been told. There 
is no detective story that can compare with it. 
The means used by ancient peoples to give ob- 
jective form to words and thoughts are fasci- 
nating in their interest. Such people had, at first, 
no alphabet. Modern alphabets have interesting 
histories. Early peoples began by drawing pic- 
tures of objects. The earliest of all scripts was 
pictographic. And so the earliest form of script 
found in the Tigris-Euphrates valley was picto- 
graphic. It became conventional and stereotyped 
only with the passage of hundreds of years. In 
the case of ancient Egypt, the script never lost 
its pictographic character as the script of Baby- 
lonia did. 

The normal script of the Tigris-Euphrates val- 
ley was one which had developed out of a simple 
picture script and consisted of thousands of 
signs—no alphabet—but innumerable signs, like 
Chinese or Japanese, each made up of a series of 





~Decipherment of Inscriptions 21 


wedge-shaped strokes. These signs we call cunei- 
form (Latin, cuneus, a wedge). The Egyptian 
script remained pictographic, consisting of thou- 











BARLY AND LATE CUNEIFORM 


Fig. 3 





sands of little pictures of men, animals, birds, 
flowers, and other objects. At a very early period 
a cursive form of the pictograph developed in 
Which the pictures were written more simply and 
in abbreviated form. This form is called the 
hieratic. Later there developed a still more cur- 


22 Forgotten Empires 


sive and simpler form, the demotic, but all three. 
existed side by side down to the very end of 
Kegyptian civilization. The Hittites also used a 
picture script which apparently never developed 
into a cursive or simpler form. But at a very 
early period, for ordinary purposes, the Hittites 
used the Babylonian cuneiform script in a simi- 
lar manner to the way in which a Chinese stu- 
dent may transliterate his signs into Roman or 
English letters. 

The earliest travellers in the Tigris-Kuphrates 
valley, who saw stones and bricks bearing cunei- 
form inscriptions, thought they were merely 
decorated stones and bricks. True, the decoration 
was a monotonously regular one. But, at first, 
they never dreamed of a script. However, as time 
went on, and other travellers came, it was gradu- 
ally surmised that the decoration might be a 
script and the stones and bricks might bear some 
message from the ancient past. In 1621 an Italian 
traveller, Pietro della Valle, more curious than 
others, copied some of the decorations and in- 
scriptions at Persepolis in Persia and studied 
them at leisure. He made very little headway, but 
saw reason for believing that the script ran from 
left to right and not from right to left as most 
other Semitic scripts do. In 1627 an English tray- 
eller, Cotton, copied three lines, and a friend of 
his, Mr. Herbert, in 1677, published a facsimile 
copy of them in order that others might have an 
opportunity of examining and _ studying the 


~Decipherment of Inscriptions i, 


script. In 1711 a French traveller, the Chevalier 
Chardin, published twenty-three plates of the Per- 
sepolis inscription. The same text was copied in 
1712 by a German physician, named Englebert 
Kaempfer, who decided that the script was not 





T Darius, the mghty king ; King of 
 Kongs oo son of Hystashes. 
Kornes, the mughly hang , nung 4 
Cae Son of Parcs, the on 
TP fr EP Xe OTE | Porac re 

D A =R H E UV oH 
4. i Ty aC SW) 7 VE 
GO sh f A 5S P 


xy Cons qq Y4e- Wry Kas f b— Pp 
a 
KH gH) Ag RR GHOLL 








J 





Fig. 4—KEY TO DECIPHERMENT 


alphabetic but ideographic, that is, he believed 
that each sign gave expression to an idea, or was 
a complete word. 

For the next fifty years very little progress was 
made, although many intrepid travellers and 
careful observers examined the inscriptions. It 
was not until 1785, when Karsten Niebuhr, whom 
we have already mentioned, and who had copied 


24 Forgotten Empires 


more of the inscriptions than any of his predeces-_ 
sors, was successful in recognizing in the Persepo- 
lis inscriptions three different forms of cuneiform 
which was later called Old Persian, Median, and 
Assyrian. He picked out forty-two signs which he 
considered alphabetic, but there his discoveries 
ceased. In 1800 Tychsen drew the correct conclu- 
sion that the three different forms of the cunei- 
form represented three different languages. Work- 
ing on Niebuhr’s plates it was he perhaps who 
determined the sign which was used as a sentence 
divider and went so far as to essay a tentative 
translation of one of the smaller inscriptions, 
which, however, was pure guesswork, and turned 
out to be entirely erroneous. But a contemporary, 
Miinter, a Dane, suggested that a certain series 
of seven characters occurring in all inscriptions, 
stood for the word king, a conjecture which finally 
turned out to be correct, although he himself re- 
jected it. 

Not long before the time of Tychsen and Mitin- 
ter, a young French linguist, Anquetil-Duperron, 
was busy learning to read the characters and to 
interpret the contents of the Avesta. Through the 
publication of his material scholars had before 
them specimens of the language employed in the 
days of the Persian rulers. Of course, the charac- 
ters used in the Avestan manuscripts were en- 
tirely different from those found on the Perse- 
polis inscriptions. But it was rightly assumed 
that the sounds behind both were the same. At 


Decipherment of Inscriptions 25 


about the same time an Arabic scholar, de Sacy, 
in studying Greek and Pehlevi inscriptions at 
Naksh-i-Rustam noted a certain stereotyped or- 
der of phrases and titles in these texts. Now, it 
was already observed that in the Persepolis in- 
scriptions certain groups of signs occurred fre- 
quently in all of them. It was at this point that 
immortal fame came to the name of a young Ger- 
man teacher of Greek at Géttingen, Georg Iried- 
rich Grotefend (born 1775), who proceeded to 
pick out those words in the Persepolis inscription 
that occurred frequently in all of them, and to 
fit them into the scheme observed by de Sacy: 
“N, great king, king of kings, son of, ete.” Further 
analogy with de Sacy’s work led him to choose a 
word for “king” which ought to follow the name 
at the beginning of the group and appear several 
times afterwards. The diagonal sign which Miin- 
ter had conjectured to be a word separator made 
it easy to point out a series of signs constituting 
a word. It was not long before Grotefend hit upon 
several signs occurring just where one would ex- 
pect the word for king. With the dictionary com- 
piled by Anquetil-Duperron the word for king 
could easily be found. Grotefend’s next task was 
to study the signs occurring in the neighborhood 
of the word for king, which he guessed ought to 
make up the names of old Persian rulers already 
known to us. Further study led him to guess that 
the inscriptions had to do with three kings (three 
series of signs), which might be grandfather, 


26 Forgotten Empires 


father and son, the first of which did not bear the 
title of king. Immediately he thought of Hystas- 
pes, Darius, Xerxes, and de Sacy’s formula gave 
him: 


Darius, great king, king of kings, son of 
Hystaspes ; 

Xerxes, great king, king of kings, son of Darius, 
the king. 


It was in this conjecture that his genius flashed 
out. He thus had from this formula an excellent 
starting point. The Persian word for “king” is 
Khsheio; and he gave to the group of signs which 
he ascribed to the places where he expected the 
word “king”—and there were several of them, all 
alike—the values: KH-SH-E-I-O. Then it was 
easy work in assigning equivalents to the signs 
that made up the royal names. Thus he had 
D-A-R-H-E-U-SH (Darius) ; KH-SH-E-I-O (king) ; 
G-O-SH-T-A-S-P (Hystaspes); KH-SH-H-A-R- 
SH-A (Xerxes)—three proper names and the 
word for “king” containing the value of a good 
many signs. This stroke of genius laid a firm 
foundation for the decipherment of the cunei- 
form script. 

Other scholars now took up the task. Christian 
Lassen, a student of Persian, demonstrated the 
syllabic character of the script, and a Danish 
scholar, Rask, determined the value of two more 
Signs, m and n. 

In many respects, the most remarkable of all 





~ Decipherment of Inscriptions LY 


decipherers of cuneiform was Sir Henry Rawlin- 
son, whom we have already met as an archae- 
ologist. While on duty as an army officer in 


S: Greet ic : y, 
K eure aay CH te ‘ 





: fe ’ Wet 
Cs hee 
AEST. 7 








Fig, 5 ECIMEN OF THE BEHISTUN TEXT 
Persia he saw many cuneiform inscriptions. Some 
of them he copied, and became deeply interested 
in the strange characters. He prepared a list of 
the signs and without any knowledge at all of 
the work of de Sacy, Grotefend, Rask, or Lassen, 
started in 1835 to decipher proper names. He un- 


28 Forgotten Empires 


consciously followed the same method as Grote- . 
fend and by a strange coincidence read the same 
three names, Darius, Xerxes, Hystaspes. His 
work was now mostly confined to a study of a 
long inscription cut into a rock at Behistun, 
which contained 400 lines, in each of the three 
different kinds of cuneiform script. The task of 
copying the inscription was a remarkable one for 
the rock rose 300 feet above the road and he had 
to construct a scaffold to reach it, and at certain 
places had to suspend himself by a rope so as 
to obtain as complete and accurate a copy as 
possible. 

Here Rawlinson had an inscription with sev- 
eral hundred names of places which he managed 
to read and identify with the help of classical 
writers and mediaeval geographers. These names 
furnished him with eighteen additional values 
and by 1859 he was able to read two hundred 
lines of the Persian text of the inscription at 
Behistun. 

Meanwhile in far-off Ireland, an English clergy- 
man, Hincks, was labouring on the published 
texts. He was not a traveller, but a parish priest, 
who between times interested himself in this 
strange foreign script, and succeeded by 1847 in 
determining two hundred signs. Rawlinson now 
learned of the work of European scholars on the 
texts and soon entered into correspondence with 
them, and by comparison, rejection and modifica- 
tion succeeded in testing results sufficiently to 


~ Decipherment of Inscriptions 29 


place decipherment on an absolutely sure founda 
tion. 

Thus, step by step, the wondrous work went on, 
until in 1857 H. Fox Talbot proposed a test. A 
hitherto untranslated historical text of Tiglath- 
Pileser was chosen, copies were made and sent to 
four cuneiform students, Rawlinson, Hincks, Op- 
pert (a French scholar), and Talbot himself. 
They agreed to send their translations in sealed 
packages to the Royal Asiatic Society. The plan 
was carried out and the Commission, appointed 
to compare the four translations, found the 
agreement to be so complete in all essentials as 
to carry conviction to the most hardened sceptic. 
Thus was passed the first stage in the decipher- 
ment of the cuneiform script. Of course much 
work was yet to be done, but scholars were now 
able to proceed upon the basis of assured results. 

Attempts to decipher the hieroglyphic script of 
ancient Egypt were made many hundreds of years 
ago because of its apparent simplicity, which is, 
however, not a reality. The script is pictographic, 
but there came a time when one of the greatest 
steps in the rise and development of civilization 
was made, and that was when the early Egyptians 
devised a means of expressing abstract ideas by 
means of their pictographic script. Hence, the 
pictures that we see as hieroglyphics do not al- 
Ways represent what they appear to give in pic- 
ture form. Thus, for example, the picture of a 
human eye means “to do.” Attempts were made 


30 Forgotten Empires 


hundreds of years ago to decipher the hiero-. 
elyphic and to read texts, some, for example, be- 
ing read backwards and upside down. The de- 
cipherment was really accomplished only about a 
hundred years ago. After many attempts and 
much Jabour and some success on the part of 
others, this task was finally accomplished by the 
great French savant, Jean-Francois Champollion. 
In 1799 there was discovered near Alexandria by 
an officer of the Napoleonic expedition, the Ro- 
setta Stone, containing a proclamation by the 
priests of Memphis setting forth the good deeds of 
Ptolemy Epiphanes. This proclamation was set 
forth in three scripts, hieroglyphic, demotic, and 
Greek. Now, as early as 1797, Zoega had guessed 
that groups of characters in hieroglyphic sur- 
rounded with a cartouche or oval are royal 
names. It was a comparatively easy task to locate 
the name of Ptolemy on the Rosetta Stone and to 
find its equivalent in the Greek text. But Champol- 
lion had already come across an obelisk from the 
island of Philae in hieroglyphic and Greek, dedi- 
cated to Ptolemy and his queen Cleopatra. This 
obelisk contained the names of Ptolemy and Cleo- 
patra in cartouches. The accompanying diagram 
(No. 6) will show how Champollion arrived at the 
value of twelve Egyptian hieroglyphic signs, and 
that they were mostly alphabetic. Thus was laid the 
foundation for the full decipherment of the Egyp- 
tian script. This great work of genius was accom- 
plished in 1822, just about one hundred years ago. 


Decipherment of Inscriptions 3] 


Champollion’s list was soon extended by the 
use of other cartouches. Besides, it was soon seen 















Cartouche 
containing ie name of 








"Note thet vowels ore 











sed 10; are signs that 
denote a female. 


Fe 2) 


Seat always fepresent: 
sed in Egyptian. 





Fig. 6—KEY TO THE HIEROGLYPHIC 


that the Egyptian language was the ancestor of 
the Coptic, which proved a most helpful clue. 

It is interesting to note that it was the demotic 
of the Rosetta Stone which first attracted the at- 


32 Forgotten Empires 


tention of scholars and a facsimile of it was pre- - 
pared by the Society of Antiquities of London. 
De Sacy and Akerblad (a Swede) were the first 
to publish dissertations on it (1802). But it was 
Thomas Young who in 1814 published a study of 
the demotic characters, with an alphabet embody- 
ing Akerblad’s results, and who, in 1818, con- 
tributed an extensive article on Egypt to the 
Ineyclopaedia Brittanica with an explanation 
(though largely incorrect) of about two hundred 
hieroglyphics. Champollion, of course, worked 
with full knowledge of these results, and absorbed 
the work of Young, just as Young did that of 
Akerblad. But he possessed a good knowledge of 
Coptic which the others did not. 

The work of reading the later and cursive 
forms of the hieroglyphic, namely hieratic and 
demotic, required chiefly the application of the 
principles laid down by Champollion. But the 
work has gone on for the past century, many 
careful students and brilliant scholars taking 
part. Although the great and masterful begin- 
ning was made by a French scholar, ably antici- 
pated in some particulars by the Swede Akerblad 
and the Englishman Young, the best work in this 
difficult task, in recent times, has been done by 
German and English scholars, although French 
scholarship has by no means been lacking. 

At the present time, in the matter of the Hit- 
tite hieroglyphic, we are just where we were in 
the matter of cuneiform and Egyptian hierogly- 


- Decipherment of Inscriptions 55 


phic before the epoch-making work of Grotefend 
and Champollion. Many attempts have been made 
to solve this perplexing problem, but until ade- 
quate bilinguals are found, there is little hope for 
complete success. Of course, we now have, thanks 
to Hugo Winckler, a mass of material in the Hit- 
tite language, but in cuneiform script, and an un- 
usual phenomenon is happening. We are learning 
the Hittite language without being able to read 
their own native script. The great work. of 
Hrozny and others is gradually resulting in a re- 
construction of the ancient Hittite language, but 
the script remains still undeciphered. 

Many attempts at decipherment have been 
made by various scholars—Conder, Peiser, Jen- 
sen, Thompson, Cowley, Frank, and others. Some 
of these failed, owing to the inaccuracy of early 
copies of the inscriptions, others due to a funda- 
mental defect of method. The greatest advance, 
so far, is due to Sayce who has worked inde- 
fatigably at the difficult problem for forty-five 
years. It is to him we owe the recovery of the 
first small bilingual inscription, the Boss of Tar- 
kondemos, really a silver seal with a cuneiform 
legend round the edge and some Hittite signs and 
a figure in the middle. But the help it gives is 
very small. The only other bilingual, called the 
seal of Indilimma, gives no help, as its reading 
is uncertain and its interpretation doubtful. The 
best summary of the problem and its difficulties 
at the present time is to be found in Cowley’s 


34 Forgotien Empires 


Schweich Lectures, The Hittites, 1920. The Hit- 
tite hieroglyphics, most interesting and most. 
practical, with lines reading from left to right 
and right to left alternately, remain a challenge 
to the imagination, vision, detective skill, and 
scholarship of our age. 

But the decipherment of the cuneiform and of 
the Egyptian and Hittite hieroglyphics is but the 
beginning of the second step in the recovery of 
forgotten empires. One has still to go a long way 
before the inscriptions of ancient peoples can be 
made to surrender their treasures. There must 
follow the collection, sifting, and classification of 
words in sign lists, word lists, and lexicons. Then 
the grammar and syntax must be reconstructed 
and made to live again. All this must be accom- 
plished before successful translations are assured. 
And finally these translations must be brought 
together where students, incapable of making use 
of the original.languages, may have access to 
them in their work of reconstructing the life and 
civilization of the past. 

At the present time, while we have many word 
lists and incomplete lexicons of cuneiform and 
Eevptian, the publication of adequate books of 
this kind remains yet to be accomplished. The 
ereat Berlin Egyptian Dictionary will probably 
be published within the present decade. The Chi- 
cago Assyrian Dictionary may be ready within 
the present generation. There are fairly good 
grammars, although there are innumerable gram- 


- Decipherment of Inscriptions 35 


LAR Pt 
I PS 
vane pe 





36 Forgotten Empires 


matical and syntactical problems yet to be solved, 
and the number of scholars capable of dealing 
with these problems is lamentably small. As for 
translations of texts, they are unfortunately 
scattered among a hundred technical journals 
and other periodicals and special books with 
which only experts can be familiar. And finally, 
there are literally thousands of texts which have 
never yet at all been translated. What a challenge 
to young scholarship! What a thrill of delight 
one experiences when he translates a text which 
has remained unread and unknown for sometimes 
five thousand years! The few men who are capa- 
ble and willing to do the work at the present time 
are so handicapped by the necessity of teaching 
and preaching to earn an honest living that they 
have neither time nor strength left for the severer 
discipline of translation and interpretation. En- 
dowments are sadly needed for such men, and to 
encourage younger men who must master a dozen 
different languages, besides much history and 
philosophy, before they can even begin the ardu- 
ous task of translation. 

Too little has been said, so far, about the an- 
cient Sumerian, a civilization far more ancient 
than Babylonian and perhaps also than Egyp- 
tian. This has been due to the fact that the script 
is cuneiform, and to a considerable extent, the 
older pictographic form of cuneiform. But the 
language itself is not Semitic but proto-Semitic. 
It is at present translatable, but not easily so. 


Decipherment of Inscriptions 37 


The language is aglutinative, and bristles with 
unsolved problems. There is no complete sign list 
yet; nor can it, at present, be made, while many 
sigus are unknown and many texts have not yet 
been published. There are several grammars, but 

















Fig. 8—A HITTITE INSCRIPTION 


the structure of the verb, for example, is as yet 
very imperfectly understood. The number of 
scholars who can independently read Sumerian 
may be reckoned on one’s fingers with ease with- 
out repeating the digits. Here, to a large extent, 
is virgin soil, and here is abundance of original 
and fascinating work to be done. There are hun- 


38 Forgotten Empires 


dreds of these original texts waiting for transla- 
tors; and thousands are coming and will come to 
light in the course of the present decade. The 
second step in the recovery of forgotten empires 
is thus an important, and also a challenging, and 
thrilling one. 


IV. RECONSTRUCTION OF ANCIENT 
CIVILIZATION 


MopDERN CIVILIZATION is the heir of ancient 
civilization. We have built upon the foundations 
of the past. So in a sense ancient civilization was 
never lost. But of the elements of our civilization 
as they appeared in their own background and 
atmosphere we knew nothing until within the last 
century. The next step in the recovery of forgot- 
ten empires has to do with the building up of a 
picture of what ancient civilizations were. This 
is done by means of knowledge derived from the 
translated texts of the past. 

At the present time a fairly comprehensive his- 
tory of the ancient Oriental world exists. There 
are, of course, serious gaps. These will be filled 
up in time. But it is a comparatively easy matter 
for us to trace back century by century the his- 
tory of Babylonia and Egypt from the beginning 
of our era to close on four thousand years earlier. 
And it can be done with a fair amount of ful- 
ness; indeed the new Cambridge Ancient History, 
a history covering the empires under considera- 
tion and confined to the Nearer Orient, consists 
of two volumes, each over seven hundred closely 


40 Forgotten Empires 


printed pages, which bring the history down only 
to 1000 B.C., and these two books are not by any 
means exhaustive. This has been made possible 
by the work of excavators, decipherers, and trans- 
lators. 

The first task in the reconstruction of the his- 
tory of the past was the establishment of a 
chronological background. How are we enabled 
to reckon back 3750 B.C.? This would not be at 
all possible were it not for the immense amount 
of chronological material which has been found 
in inscriptions and other texts. Then there are 
recorded in ancient texts and inscriptions many 
astronomical notes. In the case of Sumerian, 
Babylonian, and Assyrian history the matter was 
comparatively easy. The Ptolemaic Canon served 
as a starting point. It furnishes the means of 
reckoning back to 747 B.C. Then there are the As- 
syrian Eponym Chronicles and Lists, which take 
us back to 911 B.C. Each year is accounted for 
in these lists. Then there are Babylonian Chron- 
icles, Babylonian King-lists, and Sumerian King- 
lists that take us back, with a few gaps, to about 
4000 B.C. All this material is supplemented by 
various kinds of recorded events and series of 
events. The people of the Tigris-Euphrates valley 
were keen students of the heavenly bodies and 
made numerous observations which they recorded 
with great care. These records have been used by 
modern astronomers in such a way as to cor- 
roborate the findings of dead-reckoning. The 


Reconstruction of Ancient Cwilization 4] 


chronological background of Sumerian, Baby- 
lonian, and Assyrian history has thus been estab- 
lished with scientific accuracy. 

















Fig. 9—GUDEA OF LAGASH 


In the case of Egypt we had, not only many 
astronomical notes and various lists, but also the 
advantage of a native chronology on the famous 
Palermo Stone. Then besides all that, an Egyp- 
tian historian and priest, about 250 B.C., wrote a 


42 Forgotten Empires 


history of his country in Greek, fragments of | 
which are extant. He divided his history into 
dynasties, which have served as an outline for our 
modern chronology of ancient Egyptian history. 

















Fig. 10—-SENNACHERIB RECEIVING TRIBUTE 


Then came the work of putting the flesh of his- 
tory upon these skeletons of chronology. And the 
work has been marvellously done. So well has it 
been done, and so numerous have been our 
sources, that there are some periods in ancient 


Reconstruction of Ancient Cwilization 43 


Babylonian and Egyptian history which are 
known better than some periods in English bhis- 
tory. For example, we know vastly more about 
the reign of Hammurabi of Babylonia, about 2000 
B.C., than we know about the reign of King Al- 
fred; and we know more about the reign of Thut- 
mose III of Egypt, about 1480 B.C., than we do 
about the reign of King John. This is due to the 

















Fig. 11—ASHURBANIPAL AND HIS QUEEN 


immense amount of contemporaneous material 
Which we possess. We can follow back, step by 
step, year by year, reign by reign, dynasty by 
dynasty, the history of Egypt or Babylonia from 
the latest time well into the fourth millenium be- 
fore our era. 

For many of these periods we possess not only 
state and official contemporaneous material, but 
we very often have individual correspondence, 
family archives, and material of the most per- 
sonal character. By means of such material, to- 


44 Forgotten Empires 


gether with contemporaneous pictures, portraits, 
and statues of monarchs and other personalities, 
we are enabled to make the lives of the ancients 
as vivid as the most modern of biographies. The 
characters of Gudea, Sargon II, Nebuchadnezzar, 
Hatshepsut, Ikhnaton, Rameses II, are just as 
vivid, and more so, than those of Julius Caesar, 
Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, or Peter 
the Great. We not only know about them, but we 
know exactly what they looked like. 

Of equal importance, but perhaps more diffi- 
cult, and at any rate more interesting in many 
respects, is the reconstruction of the religious 
and moral ideas and ideals of these ancient peo- 
ples. What were their ideas of god and his rela- 
tionship with man? Did the ancients ever achieve 
monotheism? Or were they all polytheists? What 
was their idea of the will of god and how did that 
relate itself to their moral conceptions? These 
and many other questions must be answered. And 
what a rich and various world of ideas it was in 
which they lived! The world was peopled with 
gods, the divine was ever near and dear to them. 
They felt his continual presence. He shared with 
them their life. Religion and life were. co-exten- 
sive. There was no separation of Church and 
State. It was impossible to conceive of a man 
without a religion. He was born into religion just 
as he was born a citizen of his country. 

The ideas which these ancient peoples held 
about the gods and their relationship to mankind 


Reconstruction of Ancient Civilization 45 


and this world, and how the gods were wor- 
shipped, appeased, and propitiated have been, or 
are being, collected, examined, and sifted. They 
are legion, and many of them are difficult to 
classify. But the fascinating work is being done. 

















Fig. 12—AN ASSYRIAN TEMPLE 


?antheons are being reconstructed, ancient sys- 
tems of theologies are being outlined, and ethical 
and moral ideas are being classified. It is not yet 
as easy to write an account of the religion, or 
religions, of Egypt as it is to write a history 
of Egypt. There are many problems yet unsolved. 
There are too many unrelated facts and fancies 


46 Forgotten Empires 


to account for. Attempts have been made to write 
histories of the religions of the ancient Oriental 
peoples. But they are all merely tentative. Jas- 
trow’s Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, al- 
though consisting of three large volumes, is still 
a mere catalogue of certain aspects of Babylonian 
and Assyrian religion. As for a religion of Egypt 
no one has so far been ambitious enough to try 
to write one, except short sketches by various 
EKgyptologists. Innumerable difficult texts must 
first be carefully studied. Great movements of 
thought must be classified. A keener insight into 
the mind of ancient men must be developed. Per- 
haps in twenty or twenty-five years’ time we may 
be ready to attempt a history of the religion of 
ancient Egypt. Problems there are in myriads! 
But what a challenge to men of genius and in- 
dustry. . . 

Or think of the reconstruction of a history of 
the law and commerce of Babylonia and Egypt! 
The Babylonians were a great law-making peo- 
ple. One of the greatest codes of laws ever drawn 
up is that of Hammurabi, king of Babylonia, 
about 2000 B.C, There are thousands of signed 
contracts sealed and sworn to before witnesses, 
judges, and in the name of the gods. The Hittites 
had a great code of laws. The treaty between 
Rameses IT of Egypt and the Hittite Hattushil 
is the most remarkable in ancient jurisprudence. 
There is hardly a phase of judicial relationship 
which is not covered in some form or other in 


Reconstruction of Ancient Cwilization 47 


ancient legal literature. Legal marriage contracts 
were made, sales were legally attested, endow- 
ments were legally made, and wills were legally 
drawn up. 





Fig. 13—A BRICK WITH NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S NAME 


The commercial life of Babylonia was particu- 
larly rich. They were the great commercial peo- 
ple of antiquity. The Jews acquired their busi- 
ness ability and acumen as apprentices in Baby- 


48 Forgotten Empires 


lonia. Business documents are almost number- 
less. We possess the archives and ledgers of many 
business firms. Their deeds of sale, exchange, and 
purchase are numerous. Their accounts were 
made with the utmost care, many of them sealed 
and signed. The Egyptians were also great mer- 
chants, carrying on a brisk international trade, 
with a merchant marine as early as 2900 B.C. In 
this field also there remains much to be done in 
the way of reconstruction. 

The Egyptians were the great engineers and 
architects of antiquity. Their colossal temples, 
tombs, and palaces are sufficient proof of this. 
Their engineering skill was prodigious. Both the 
Kgyptians and Babylonians were great artists. 
The seal engravings of Babylonia, the bas-relief 
and statuary of Egypt, the work in precious 
metals of both countries are too well known to 
need many words in proof of their artistic at- 
tainments. 

It may be thought that the literature of Baby- 
lonia and Egypt consists of chronologies, histories, 
accounts, and laws. That is far from the truth. 
There are excellent chronologies, useful and in- 
structive historical and biological accounts, in- 
teresting business transactions, and illuminating 
legal records, but there is much more. There are 
magical texts, prophecies, short stories, hymns, 
wisdom literature, poems and epics. It is difficult 
to appreciate the beauty of ancient poetry be- 
cause of the fact that the nature and structure 


Reconstruction of Ancient Civilization 49 


of their versification are so different from ours. 
For example, they made practically no use of 
what we call metre and rhyme. Instead, they de- 
pended almost entirely upon rhythm. And until 
modern poets arise who will take the Epic of 














Fig. 14—BABYLON RESTORED 


Gilgamesh or the Poem of Pentaur and put them 
into modern poetic form we shall never be able 
fully to realize the beauty and grandeur of an- 
cient Babylonian and Egyptian literature. But 
at present there is abundant evidence to show 
that in the ‘original form of Babylonian and 
Egyptian literature there is a beauty and 


50 Forgotten Empires 


grandeur comparable to that found in the best 
of modern literary productions. | 

And yet a history of ancient law, commerce, 
art, engineering, architecture and literature re- 
mains to be written. Material there is in great 
abundance. Attempts have been made. Excellent 
small books have been written, especially on art 
and law, but the great task of reconstructing an 
adequate idea of these arts and crafts must yet 
be attempted. 

Then there is the history of Babylonian and 
Egyptian science—astronomy, geometry, arith- 
metic, chemistry, medicine, the calendar, the al- 
phabet—the early history of all these disciplines 
belongs to Egypt and Babylonia. There is abun- 
dant material already published. There is more, 
not yet published, awaiting the industry of the 
scholar. 

These, among many other phases of life, must 
be studied and reconstructed before an adequate 
picture of the political, social, domestic, and re- 
ligious life of the ancient Orient can be reclaimed. 
The work of the recoverer of forgotten empires is 
as broad as human life itself. There is no phase 
of modern life without its counterpart in the life 
of the past. And many phases of modern life can 
be thoroughly understood only in the light of an- 
cient civilization. The writing of a history of 
ancient Oriental civilization will be a mighty 
task. Of course, no one man will be capable of do- 
ing it. There must be codperation and collabora- 


Reconstruction of Ancient Cwvilization 5] 


tion, and even that can be done only after many 
years of collecting, sifting and examining. 
In the reconstruction of ancient life and civili- 











Fig. 15—RAMESES II. 


zation there are innumerable special problems 
which have to be discussed, and, if possible, 
solved. In fact, before the reconstruction can at 
all be accomplished completely thousands of spe- 


52 Forgotten Empires 


cial questions must be answered—questions that 
are most fundamental and basic. Indeed, less 
than twenty years ago, there were great Oriental- 
ists who doubted the very existence of a Sumerian 
language, and, of course, of a Sumerian people. 
But, today, no one doubts it. But there are still 
many questions to be answered about the Sumer: 
ians. What was their origin? Whence did they 
originally come? Was their original home in 
Southern Russia or in China? There are those 
who hold the former and those who hold the 
latter. There are most interesting similarities be- 
tween early Sumerian thought, language, art, and 
writing, and that of early China. Indeed the 
physiognomy of both peoples is wonderfully 
alike. Then there are those who see in the Sumer- 
ians an indigenous people whose original home 
was either in the mountains east of the Tigris- 
Kuphrates valley or in the valley itself. All such 
and many more questions—must be answered 
before we shall feel that we know much about 
the Sumerians. 

And yet we do know a great deal about them. 
We know much about their religious life, for we 
have much of their religious literature to read; 
we know about their kings and great men for we 
have their records and the records of their wars 
and political acts; we know about their social 
and commercial life because we have detailed ac- 
counts of various phases of both; we know about 
their religious and moral life for we have hun- 





oh, 


Reconstruction of Ancient Cwilization 




















) 


IV 


uP 


TI 


HO 


N 


(AME 


N 


NATO 


16—IKH 


a 


ik 


EF 


54 Forgotten Empires 


dreds of poems, liturgies, hymns, and moral pre- 
cepts, and we even know what they looked like 
for we possess pictures, drawings, bas-reliefs, and 
statues of them, works of art contemporaneous 
with the subjects of which they treat. 

We find the Sumerians in the fourth millenium 
before our era inhabiting the southern part of the 
Tigris-Euphrates valley, possessing a language al- 
ready developed out of the pictographic stage, a 
literature of remarkable power, a complicated re- 
ligious life, an art already far from the initial 
stage, and a political, social, and demestic life so 
complicated and so far developed as to demand a 
period of thousands of years for its development. 

There is also the question of the origin and 
home of the ancient Egyptians. No completely 
satisfactory hypothesis has as yet been advanced. 
There are various theories. The Egyptian lan- 
guage, so African in vocabulary, so Semitic in 
structure, presents a difficult problem. But most 
difficult of all is the question of the antiquity of 
their civilization. Consider, for example, early 
Kgyptian art. During the period of the early 
kings of the Old Kingdom, about 3000 B.C., there 
suddenly appeared in Egypt a highly artistic 
work, full of character, action, and anatomical 
detail. Some of the highest forms of art are found 
in perfection. Thus, the head of an early king, 
with its wonderful accuracy of facial curves, is 
equal to any later work—perhaps the head of 
Namer of the First Dynasty. Then consider the 


Reconstruction of Ancient Civilization 55 


noble spaciousness and grandeur of conception 
expressed by the simple execution of the statuary 
of the Pyramid Kings. There is nothing superflu- 
ous, nothing coarse, nothing trivial, for example, 
in the statuette of Khufu, a little figure in ivory, 
not more than a quarter of an inch long, but pos- 
sessed with an immensity of energy and will 
which is almost beyond imagination. The life-size 
statue of Khafre, majestic, serene, powerful, is 
the finest to be found anywhere. The reliefs and 
wooden panels of the same early period have a 
detail, a fineness, boldness, and vigour that was 
never surpassed in any later phase of the life of 
Kgypt—a great artistic country. 

In like manner the architecture, engineering, 
and literary skill of the earlier period in Egyp- 
tian civilization was never later excelled, and in 
some respects, never equalled. Now, thousands of 
years previous to 3000 B.C. must have been con- 
sumed in the development of such an art and such 
technique. The history of that earliest period can 
only as yet be surmised. We know. practically 
nothing about it. 

It is sometimes thought that we have a pretty 
full knowledge of the Babylonians and_ their 
civilization. We know that they were the heirs of 
Sumeria. We know that what we call the Baby- 
lonian cuneiform is really Sumerian, and what 
we call Babylonan religion is, in reality, a de- 
veloped form of Sumerian religion. But what was 
the origin of the Babylonians and whence came 


56 Forgotten Empires 


they? It has hitherto been assumed that they 
came from South Arabia. Recently, however, the 
researches of Professor Clay of Yale University 
are making that assumption a very difficult one 
to maintain. He thinks that they came from the 
northwest, from Amurru, and gives evidence 
which he thinks will prove that in Syria there 
once existed a great empire, almost as great as 
Babylonia itself, which he calls the “Empire of 
the Amorites”. Professor Clay is a great pioneer. 
Very few will follow him as yet in this matter, 
but it is not unlikely that, twenty years hence, 
the ancient history of Amurru will be such as to 
demonstrate Clay’s hypothesis, 

The origin of Assyria is still very much in the 
dark, and many details in her later history are 
only gradually being cleared up. Professor Olm- 
stead recently completed a large volume on the 
history of Assyria, and just before going to press, 
only in time to include it, an Assyrian text was 
published in England which entirely upset all 
theories about the manner and time of the fall of 
Nineveh. We now know that Nineveh fell not in 
606, as formerly believed, but six years earlier, 
in 612. 

The reconstruction of Hittite civilization is 
vet in its very infancy. The language has not been 
fully deciphered and the native script is yet com- 
pletely unknown. Dictionaries and grammars 
must be built before the texts and inscriptions 
can be read. In fact, according to latest investi- 


Reconstruction of Ancient Cwilization oy 


gations, the Hittite Empire was composed of 
various groups of people speaking at least eight 
different languages. So we may not accurately 




















Fig. 17—TUTANKHAMEN 


speak of a Hittite language, meaning thereby the 
language of the Empire of the Hittites, but of a 
Hatti language, the language of perhaps the domi- 
nating nation in the Hittite group. At any rate, 
not only the language, but also the history, re- 


58 Forgotten Empires 


ligion, culture, political, social, and domestic life 
of the empire remains yet to be reconstructed. 

And yet in the thirteenth century before our 
era the Hittite empire was powerful enough to 
curb the power of powerful Egypt, and the Hit- 
tite king Hattushil made a treaty with the great 
Rameses II on perfectly equal footing. Moreover, 
the Hittites were probably the link between the 
Orient and Europe. This probably will be demon- 
strated or refuted when we have learned, among 
other questions, the origin of the Hittites and 
their relationship to the Indo-European group 
whose languages the Hittite tongues so closely re- 
semble. 

Thus the third step in the recovery of forgotten 
empires, full of problems, bristling with difficul- 
ties, is, in some respects, the most interesting of 
all. The scope of work here is as broad as human- 
ity itself. There is not a single phase of human 
interest and of human life which does not yet 
await the work of the industrious investigator. 
Nor is industry alone sufficient. He must have im- 
agination, sympathy, the power to visualize an- 
cient customs, ideas, life, and thought, and using 
the chips according as they fall from the tools of 
the investigators and pioneers, fit them together 
and build up the grand structure of ancient Ori- 
ental civilization. 


V. THE CO-ORDINATION OF THE CIVILI- 
ZATIONS OF ANCIENT EMPIRES: 


IExcavATION, decipherment, and reconstruction 
are the three great steps to be taken, one after 
the other, in the recovery of: forgotten empires. 
Nothing can be done until the remains of ancient 
civilizations have been uncovered and exposed to 
view and studied. Then, and only until then, can 
the linguist and historian begin their task. When 
these three steps shall have completely been taken 
we shall be in a position to witness the full flower 
of ancient life. It may never be possible to com- 
plete it. It is an ideal at which to aim. Then the 
life and thought of each separate empire will 
stand out complete, but as yet unrelated, unco- 
ordinated. The coérdination of separate ancient 
civilizations is the subject of this chapter. 

Ancient empires could no more successfully 
live in isolation than can modern countries. 
Egyptian civilization influenced Babylonian, and 
Babylonian civilization influenced Egyptian, and 
they both influenced and were influenced by Hit- 
tite civilization. One of the great and interesting 
problems of coédrdination is the relationship be- 
tween Sumeria and Egypt, and Babylonia and 


60 Forgotten Empires 


Egypt. Some scholars go so far as to think that 
Menes of Egypt and Naram-Sin of Babylonia 
came into contact—that the Manium, king of 
Magan, whom Naram-Sin, defeated, was Menes. 
This is highly questionable, but is an indication 
‘of how close scholars feel that Babylonia and 





Vig. 1S—BITS OF THE BABYLONIAN CREATION 
AND FLOOD 


Egypt were. During the Kassite period we have 
abundant evidence of relationship between the 
two great empires, indeed we have some of the 
very letters which were exchanged between the 
pharaohs of Egypt and Babylonian kings. Fur- 
thermore, the fact that the Egyptian language is 
Semitic in structure shows close relationship, 
at a very early period, between Egypt and the 


Semitic world; and this relationship can be, and 


Co-ordination of Ancient Civilizations 61 


has been traced, at intervals, between the two em- 
pires from the earliest to the latest times. As far 
as Assyria is concerned, at various times through- 
out her history she came into violent conflict with 
Egypt, and at one time for a short period had 
conquered Egypt. On the other hand, Egypt sent 
many military expeditions into Assyria, and 
there is no reason to believe that military opera- 
tions were the only occasions on which the two 
great empires came into relationship. 

The Empire of the Hittites occupied a middle 
position and came into contact with both the 
Babylonians and the Egyptians. As early as 1800 
B.C. the Hittites raided Babylonia, and by 1400 
B.C., Shubbiluliuma, a great Hittite king, was 
strong enough to exact a treaty from Egypt, and 
shortly afterwards Mutallu made another treaty 
with Egypt, and still later Hattushil made his 
famous treaty with Rameses II. At about the 
same time Hattushil formed an alliance with 
Babylonia against Assyria. But these are mere in- 
dications of the continuous cultural and commer- 
cial relationships between the Hittites and Baby- 
lonia and Egypt. 

There were continuous migrations and emigra- 
tions from one part of the Oriental world to an- 
other. One example of these was the Hyksos 
movement into Egypt about 1675 B.C. The origin 
of the Hyksos is not certainly known. They may 
have been related to the Kassites who conquered 
Babylonia about 1750 B.C., or perhaps they were 


62 Forgotten Empires 


of Syrian origin. At any rate, they conquered 
Egypt and reigned there for a hundred years, 
when they were expelled by Ahmose I. 

The Hyksos movement is an important one, for 
about the same time the “Sons of Israel” made 








Fig. 19—‘‘A TOWER OF BABEL” 


their way into Egypt. It has naturally been 
thought that there is some relationship between 
the “Sons of Israel” and the Hyksos. What that 
relationship was no one, at present, knows. But 
the question is provocative, and it is interesting. 
The Hyksos made a profound impression upon 


Co-ordination of Ancient Civilizations 63 


the Egyptians. They introduced the war-like use 
of the horse, and so aroused Egypt that the in- 
habitants of that country, temporarily at least, 
became war-like and expelled their teachers with 
great violence. 








Fig. 202—MUMMY OF THB PHARAOH OF 
THE OPPRESSION 


The little strip of country which later became 
Palestine was at one time Babylonian, at another, 
Egyptian, and at still another, Hittite. It was 
the highway between Babylonia, the country of 
the Hittites, and Egypt. As early as 2900 B.C. 
Lugal-zaggisi ruled from the Persian Gulf to the 


64 Forgotten Empires 


Mediterranean, and before 2700 B.C., Shargali- 
sharri, son of Naram-Sin, subdued the West. 
From 2900 B.C. until the final capture of Jeru- 
salem in 586 by Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylonia 
looked upon the West as in some sense hers. The 
Hittites were victims of a similar notion, and so 
were the Egyptians. As for the Hittites, they so 
impressed themselves upon the later inhabitants 
of Palestine, the Hebrews, that one of the great- 
est of the Hebrews could refer to the Hittite as 
the mother of Jerusalem (Ezek. 16:3). 

As early as the time of Snefru, 2900 B.C., Egypt 
had direct relations with Syria and Palestine, and 
Pepi I 2580 B.C., set out to conquer it, and by 
1860 B.C. Sesostris III had a firm hold upon 
Palestine and established his power pretty firmly 
upon Gezer. Thutmose I, in 1530 B.C., conquered 
Syria and extended his sway as far as the 
Kuphrates, and from that time until Rameses ITI 
Syria and Palestine were Egyptian or angers un- 
der Egyptian influence. 

During these later years there were still in 
Egypt many Asiatics, and among them the “Sons 
of Israel”. During the reign of Merneptah, son 
and successor of Rameses IT, apparently the last 
wave of these Asiatics, made their way out of 
Egypt. This movement we call the “Exodus”. 
Now, there are still many unsolved problems con- 
nected with the Exodus in spite of the wealth of 
our Old Testament material. Because of the fact 
that since the famous Tutankhamen excavations, 


Vig. 


21—STELA OF THE PHARAOH OF THE EXODUS 


Co-ordination of Ancient Civilizations 


3 


Ria es SD4 site| ld 
ERi * gual eke BEeeE <: Sire iff “ ve SC = Re: 
REACT UM Sy SES SET 





ly ery 


65 


66 Forgotten Empires 


some writers seriously connected that pharaoh 
with the Exodus, we see how uncertain the ques- 
tion of the date of the Exodus still is. The 
chances are that the Exodus covered a series of 
years beginning perhaps as early as 1450 B.C. 
and extending down to the third year of the 
reign of Merneptah, 1222 B.C., when the rem- 
nant of the “Sons of Israel” in Egypt made their 
way out and headed for the Land of Promise. At 
any rate, this is the only hypothesis which, at 
present, seems to account for the, conflicting ex- 
tra-biblical data as well as for the conflicting 
chronological material bearing upon the subject 
in the Old Testament itself. 

The work of coérdination deals with all realms 
of human life and thought. If these ancient em- 
pires came into military conflict and social and 
commercial intercourse, they also influenced one 
another culturally and religiously. They were all 
polytheists—that is certain. But is there any evi- 
dence of finer thinking and did one culture influ- 
ence the other? We know that while the Baby- 
lonians were polytheists there were tendencies 
here and there towards what, later, in Israel, be- 
came monotheism. There was, at any rate, what 
we call henotheistic thinking in Babylonia and 
Assyria. A _ similar statement holds true for 
Egypt. The Egyptians were polytheists. There 
was a tendency among [Egyptian religious think- 
ers towards monotheism, and they undoubtedly 
gave expression to ideas which we may associate 


Co-ordination of Ancient Civilizations 67 




















Vig. 22—BLACK OBELISK, 


PORTRAYING JEHU 


68 Forgotten Empires 


with henotheism. But did they develop a monothe- 
ism? The question has been answered in the 
affirmative by several students of Egyptian re- 
ligious thought. They believe that Ikhnaton about 
1375 B.C. developed such a theory. If he did, then 
others earlier than his time did. Not as dramatic- 
ally and ferociously, not as narrowly and with 
as much bigotry and fanaticism, but with the 
same reality, if we grant that Ikhnaton really 
did. But it is indeed very questionable whether 
we can apply the name of montheism which we 
apply to Judaism or Christianity to the religion 
of Ikhnaton. In any case, the interrelationship 
of religious ideas, the monotheism of Judaism, 
and the Ikhnaton and Marduk movements de- 
mand careful and patient study. They are fasci- 
nating questions and will receive the most care- 
ful attention, 

Then there are questions of moral thought. A 
study of Babylonian, Kgyptian and Old Testa- 
ment morals and moral standards reveals very 
many interesting things. There is the great moral 
movement of the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt and 
the great moral elements in the Hammurabi Code. 
There are the moral preachers of Israel in the 
Kighth Century before the Christian era. A com- 
parison between the social, family, national, in- 
ternational, and transcendental morals of ancient 
peoples makes interesting reading. What were 
their moral ideals and standards and what were 
their moral sanctions? These and many other 


Co-ordination of Ancient Civilizations 69 


moral and ethical questions demand an answer. 

Quite recently a Hittite code of laws has been 
published and already we are comparing it with 
the Code of Hammurabi, with the Assyrian Code, 
itself but recently published, and finally with the 
Mosaic Code. There are most interesting parallels 
and contrasts, and yet the study in coérdination 
of the laws of these various empires has only 
just begun. 

No more interesting field of research exists 
than that of comparative literature. And here we 
have it in all its interest in the matter of Oriental 
literature. The accounts of creation in Baby- 
lonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian literature. The 
accounts of the Flood. The lending and borrow- 
ing of mythological material, of prophetical ma- 
terial, of poetical material. Just recently a new- 
found Egyptian Book of Proverbs has been pub- 
lished, and scholars are comparing it with the 
Old ‘Testament Proverbs. There are word for 
word borrowings and lendings. The evidence of 
coordination here is beyond question. The one 
author had the work of the other before him— 
this is certain. Only a few year ago the “Baby- 
lonian Job” was discovered, and how wonder- 
fully similar the problem and its discussion to 
the Old Testament Book of Job! 

Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittites, and the Egyp- 
tians read each others literature almost as freely 
as modern nations do. In fact, they had their own 
lingua franca, as the Tell el-Amarna Letters 


70 


Forgotten Empires 


pithy 





Co-ordination of Ancient Cwilizations 7 | 


clearly demonstrate, and they had a universal 
script as the Boghazk6i inscriptions show. By 
these means there flowed over the great network 
of highways that bound together Egypt, Assyria, 
Babylonia, Palestine, Syria, and the land of the 
Hittites a correspondence which was charged 
with political, social, domestic, religious, and 
cultural ideas of all possible kinds and degrees. 
In this relationship the student has an endless 
field of research. He must test out the question 
of coérdination in every detail of culture and 
civilization. It is not necessary only to recon- 
struct a picture of ancient life and thought in 
Babylonia, Assyria and the lands of Egypt and 
of the Hittite separately ; even before that is done 
the student feels obliged to study the interrela- 
tionships and coérdinations between these vari- 
ous centres of culture and civilization. It is only 
in this way that a true and well-balanced picture 
of the ancient world can be reconstructed. The 
work of coérdination is of prime importance in 
the recovery of forgotten empires. 

These, then, are the four steps to be taken in 
the work of recovery: Excavation, decipherment, 
reconstruction, and coérdination, and in this or- 
der. One is as important in its way as the other, 
Kach requires special talents and aptitudes; 
each has its appeal; and each is thrilling and 
fascinating in itself. There are difficulties to be 
overcome in preparing oneself for work in these 
fields. But if we crave adventure and the thrill 


72 Forgotten Empires 


of discovery and detection there is no field which 
offers richer rewards than does Oriental re- 
search. It appeals to imagination, to ideals, to 
the practical and useful desire to know the past 
not only for its own sake, but for the sake of 
the present and future as well. 


VIP OUR INTEREST INS THE) PAST 


Wirth THE improvement of social conditions in 
modern countries and the increase of a certain 
amount of leisure generally there is to be noted 
a corresponding increase in interest in learning, 
culture, and civilization. It is a. comparatively 
easy matter to arouse public interest in archae- 
ology nowadays. The popularity of Tutankhamen 
is an indication of the proof of that. Men are gen- 
erally interested in the origin of things, in the 
rise and gradual development of civilization. 
This interest is, in part, due to the hold which 
the doctrine of evolution has taken upon the 
minds of people. We realize how gradually out of 
an earlier condition and state present conditions 
and states have grown and developed. Like fol- 
lowing a stream back to its source, so it is fasci- 
nating to follow back, step by step, any given 
phase of thought or endeavour. This may be called 
a general interest in archaeology. 

There are numerous particular and individual 
ways in which we are interested in the recovery 
of forgotten empires. There is, for example, what 
might be called a “biblical” interest. We are con- 
cerned in the affairs of Babylonia and Egypt be- 


74 Forgotten Empires 





1. A TELL EL-AMARNA TABLET 
2. COMMERCIAL DOCUMENT 
3. LEGAL DOCUMENT 

Fig. 24 


Our Interest in the Past 15 


cause they are “biblical” lands, because the Baby- 
lonians and Egyptians came into such close touch 
with Bible times and characters. A study of Baby- 
lonian and Egyptian life and culture furnishes 
the indispensable background against which we 
are enabled to study the Bible. It creates an at- 
mosphere in which alone we can understand the 
Bible. Think of the earliest Old Testament his- 
torical period, the age of the patriarchs. How 
very little is our Old Testament information 
about that period. How little we learn from the 
Bible about Palestine at that early period. But 
what we call “extra-biblical” material, that is, 
the knowledge about Palestine which we derive 
from Babylonian and Egyptian sources, is very 
great. By means of the extra-biblical material we 
have been able to reconstruct a fairly vivid pic- 
ture of the history, thought, life, and civilization 
of Palestine previous to the time of Abraham and 
after his journey westward. The same is true of 
any other period of Old Testament history. 
Archaeology furnishes us with an excellent back- 
ground and atmosphere in which Old Testament 
history can be satisfactorily studied. 

The Tell el-Amarna letters have made Palestine 
and Syria of the fourteenth century before our 
era a living land, and so has Egyptian material 
for the period of the sojourn of the Israelites in 
Egypt and for the Exodus. And then think of 
what the Assyrian inscriptions of the tenth, 
ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries have done for 


76 Forgotten Empires 


our knowledge of the period of the divided king- 
doms in Israel. The Neo-Babylonian, Persian, 
and Egyptian periods illuminate at almost every 











PILLARS IN THE TEMPLE 
OF KARNAK 


NS oy opr 
Wig. 25 





step the history and life of Israel down to the 

latest stages of her existence as a nation. 
Archaeology not only furnishes a background, 

an atmosphere for biblical studies, but it also 


Our Interest in the Past 77 


serves to illustrate certain biblical customs and 
usages. It even explains and confirms many diffi- 
cult problems and doubtful situations, and it 
sometimes—in fact, very often—contributes to 
our knowledge of the biblical world. There is a 
sense in which it may be said that archaeology 
is peculiarly a biblical subject. The interest in 
Oriental archaeology, at least, arose and was sup- 
ported, at first, in biblical circles. In fact, it is 
people who are primarily interested in the Bible 
who now most effectually back and support Orien- 
tal archaeological expeditions. The enthusiasm 
aroused in England, France, Germany, and Amer- 
ica from the earliest days of archaeology down 
to the present day has been due to lovers or 
students of the Bible. So our first particular in- 
terest in archaeology is biblical. 

Individual interests in the recovery of forgot- 
ten empires are legion. There is not a profession 
or an avocation in life which does not find itself 
related to the ancient past. A man may be a 
merchant bent on, and engaged in, making 
money, and yet if he thinks at all, will immedi- 
ately respond to an appeal for interest in archae- 
ology. The history and nature of his calling will 
bring that about. Tell him of the ancient business 
houses of Babylonia, show him the ledgers of 
Babylon or the contracts of Ur; read to him the 
business letters and transactions of Umma and 
Lagash; take him into the market places of these 
ancient cities of commerce and see how he will 





78 Forgotten Empires 


respond and react. How did the ancients carry on 
trade—what was their money like—how did they 
borrow, and what percentage did they pay? How 





Fig. 26—ONE OF THE GREAT OBELISKS 


did they create markets and how did they com- 
pete with other merchants? What were some of 
the great banking concerns of Babylon, and how 
did they carry on their business? These and many 
other questions can be answered with consider- 


Our Interest in the Past 79 


able detail. And it is stimulating to a modern 
business man to realize that his profession has a 
long, interesting, and honourable history. 

Any real architect is interested in the history 
of his profession, and a study of it will take him 
back through European to Oriental architecture. 
The home of great architecture in the Orient is 
Kgypt. With what delight he would visit the re- 
mains of the great Temple of Amon at Karnak 
and try to visualize it as it was when intact. 
That immense sacred enclosure, covering two mil- 
lion and a quarter square feet, large enough to 
accommodate St. Peter’s, Milan, Seville, Florence, 
St. Paul’s, Cologne, York, Amiens, and Antwerp. 
The temple itself covers four hundred thousand 
Square feet and is as large as St. Peter’s, Milan 
and Notre Dame put together. The Pillared Hall 
covers fifty thousand square feet, large enough to 
accommodate Durham cathedral and still have 
five thousand square feet to spare. Its one hun- 
dred and twenty-two pillars are each large 
enough to give place for one hundred men stand- 
ing side by side upon the top. The vast temple 
was seventeen hundred years in building. Nor is 
it only remarkable for its size. The perfection of 
proportion, the symmetry, the fineness of detail, 
the beautiful earving and tracery, the delicate 
finish of the mighty columns, are just as remark- 
able in their way. The whole is a source of 
amazement but a delight to the eye. 

We very often imagine tombs to be dreary 


80 Forgotten Empires 


places, and we have an idea that the Egyptians 
were a solemn people because of the large part 
which tombs have played in the reconstruction 
of our knowledge of ancient Egypt. But the Egyp- 





SILVER VASE OF ENTEMENA 





Fig. 27 


tians were not a solemn people; neither were 
their tombs dreary places. Their tombs were 
magnificent palaces. That of Seti I, for example, 
was three hundred and twenty-eight feet long and 
contained fourteen rooms and corridors. It was 


Our Interest in the Past 8] 


hewn out of the solid rock, the sarcophagus 
chamber being forty-three by seventeen feet. 
Moreover, the whole tomb was a work of art, and 
its walls were beautifully decorated and painted. 
But it was not by any means the largest tomb, 
for one has been found which measured eight hun- 
dred and seventy feet in length. 

The beautiful temple of Philae is one which an 
architect would never forget. Egypt is the an- 
cient land of wonderful architecture, and much 
which used to be ascribed to other civilizations 
for their origin are now known to have arisen in 
Egypt. An excellent illustration of this is the 
basilica form of church architecture which was 
first conceived by Egyptian architects. 

The material used by Babylonian architects 
was very perishable, hence the destruction of most 
of their architecture. But we have sufficient left 
to be able to show that the Babylonians had a 
most interesting type of architecture, and the 
palaces of Assyria and the temples of Babylonia 
were magnificent structures. 

But it is the artist, perhaps, who has more to 
learn from Egypt and Babylonia than anyone 
else, for the Egyptians and Babylonians were 
great artists. 

In Egypt art in its perfection may be traced 
back to the earliest historic days. The Egyptian 
artist began by attempting to realize the useful, 
but it was not long before he was not satisfied un- 
less he could produce nothing but beautifully use- 


82 Forgotten Empires 


ful things, for his native love of elegance, of na- 
ture, and of humour all combined and conspired 
to bring about beauty. Perhaps the primal ele- 
ment in Egyptian art was the attempt to capture 





Fig. 28—AN ASSYRIAN CHERUB 


mortal life for the future, and in trying to do 
that, he produced works of beauty. 

Already in the Old Kingdom the Egyptian 
artist was not only highly skilled in mechanical 
accuracy and regularity in which action was duly 


Our Interest in the Past 83 


emphasised, but his work was also full of charac- 
ter and marked by great anatomical detail, and 
by the pyramid age he could express spacious- 
ness and grandeur by simple means in which 
nothing was superfluous, coarse, or trivial. 

The two great artistic periods in Egypt, next 
in importance to the Old Kingdom, were the 
periods of the Twelfth and Eighteenth dynasties. 
The art of the Twelfth dynasty was severely beau- 
tiful in taste and sense of proportion. That of the 
Kighteenth dynasty was less honest, but more 
subtile and a little artificial. The Twelfth dynasty 
was a beautiful young woman, the Eighteenth 
was not exactly young but yet charming. The 
statuary of the Twelfth dynasty was clean and 
highly-finished and strong in facial detail, but it 
possessed neither the grandeur of the early period 
nor the vivacity of the Eighteenth dynasty. The 
reliefs of the Twelfth dynasty were perfect in the 
refinement and detail of facial curves, and 
severely restrained without the slightest trace of 
emotion. Splendid inlaid work was done—splendid 
jewelry of gold with cloisonné ornamented in fine 
stone, glass of superb brilliancy, scarabs of spiral 
and lily-spiral designs, and costumes of the sim- 
plest and most graceful forms. 

The art of the Eighteenth dynasty was one of 
emotion but with breadth, fulness and vigour of 
character gone. It was graceful in outline, vivac- 
ious in manner, romantic in style, and possessed 
a sauciness which was very attractive. Ikhnaton 


84 Forgotten Empires 


kissing his wife in public or dancing her on his 
knee is a good example. But the statuary 
was magnificent, witness the superb statue of 
Rameses II at Turin, and the painted bas-reliefs 
were splendid, although there was a_ certain 
amount of repetition. 

In painting, much progress was made during 
the Eighteenth dynasty—brilliant effects were 
produced by painting on flat, and free-hand 
painting developed considerably as may be seen 
in the tomb of Userhat at Thebes. The famous 
dinner-party done in fresco, or rather distemper, 
is a brilliant example of this type of art. There 
was also a great deal of delicate art expended 
on toilet articles and metal work was perfected. 
The best illuminated manuscripts known to Ori- 
ental art were done during this period, and in 
this connection, reference may be made to the 
artistic work done by ancient Egyptian humour- 
ists, for example, the comic animals acting the 
parts of men, as one may examine in a papyrus 
in the British Museum. 

The reign of Ikhnaton was not only a revolu- 
tionary period in religion but likewise in art. It 
was a period of naturalism and freedom from 
convention. And yet it was a period of eccentrici- 
ties. Ikhnaton desired to be ugly, and he was 
thus represented. To some extent the art of his 
period was influenced by the Aegean as may be 
seen in the spiral volute decorations in Ikhna- 
ton’s palace. For a time art became queer and 


Our Interest in the Past 85 


ugly. The clustered vases in aragonite of the time 
of Tutankhamen are positively ugly, comparable 
to some of the early Victorian atrocities in 
marble. But the miniature work of Tutankhamen’s 
time is beyong criticism. Witness the work on a 








Mis ae Me 


, iim om ie = 








Fig. 29--AN INLAID END OF ONE OF 
TUTANKHAMEN’S BOXES 


box found in his tomb, or the back of his royal 
chair, somewhat similar to that of Albrecht 
Duerer, or to the finest Japanese work of a cen- 
tury or two ago. Many other works of art of the 
time of Tutankhamen have been highly praised, 
for example, it has been said of the royal chair 
that, in art and craftsmanship, it is one of the 


86 Forgotten Empires 


finest pieces of work now in existence from any 
age, that the granite lion of Tutankhamen, in 
the British Museum, is the finest piece of animal 
sculpture known to the ancient world, and that 
the general richness of the art of that period, as 
revealed in Tutankhamen’s tomb, is not vulgar 
and ostentatious magnificence, but tempered rich- 
ness of refined art, like that of a Ghiberti or a 
Celleni, or that of the reign of Louis XIV. 

During the reign of Seti I there was a return 
to reality. The great school of Seti I adopted the 
best of Ikhnaton’s art, and improved upon it. 
Seti I himself was artistic, and his artists were 
Suave, urbane, cultured, formal, graceful, ele- 
gant, and exquisite. They drew the profile with a 
single bold sweep, their chiselling was sure and 
finished, their relief work was rounded and soft- 
ened, their composition was faultless and their 
motives possessed cohesion and unity with 
emphasis on the right place. All this and much 
more is to be seen in the magnificent procession 
scene in the temple of Rameses I, where one is 
delighted with those slender, graceful figures, the 
rustling of whose draperies one can almost hear. 

After the time of Seti I there was a gradual 
decline until the Twenty-sixth dynasty when 
there was a kind of renaissance, after which came 
the archaizing fashion of the latest period of 
Kgyptian art. 

Babylonia was poorer in art material than was 
Egypt. She had to content herself, to a large ex- 


Our Interest in the Past 87 


tent, with clay. But, in spite of that, much of 
her clay statuary is admirable. When, however, 
she secured stone with which to work she accom- 





Fig. 30—PORTION OF THE CODE 
OF HAMMURABI 


plished wonderful things. The diorite statue of 
Gudea, or the dog carved out of steatite, with 
sufficient accuracy as to allow us to recognize the 
particular breed of mastiff he was, or the gro- 


88 Forgotten Empires 


tesque composite monsters, so powerfully done, 
are works which only the finest artists could pro- 
duce. In metal there is nothing in any age of Ori- 
ental art finer than the famous silver vase of 
Entemena of Lagash, about 2850 B.C., or than 
the famous bronze doors at Balawat which have 
been compared with the Baptistry doors at Flor- 
ence, 

Babylonian and Assyrian artists excelled in 
their wonderful bas-reliefs, some of the finest of 
which are those found on the walls-of Ashurbani- 
pal’s palace, showing the king and his queen at 
tea in their garden, or others of hunting scenes. 
Their sealed cylinders also should be mentioned, 
for some of them are of the most exquisite work- 
manship. 

In engineering the Egyptians especially ex- 
celled. Modern engineers are yet at a loss to 
know how the great stone monoliths (some meas- 
uring over one hundred and five feet, weighing 
390 tons, whose breaking strain is 2,560 pounds 
to the square inch) were quarried, transported, 
and set in place. The English had their difficul- 
ties in transporting one of the smallest of these 
Egyptian monoliths to London, and so did Amer- 
icans in transporting from Egypt the obelisk now 
in Central. Park, New York. But we have a pic- 
ture of the way in which engineers loaded two 
great monoliths, each over ninety-seven feet long, 
and each weighing about 350 tons, and had them 
transported one hundred and fifty miles down 





Our Interest in the Past 89 








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902 F Forgotten Empires 


the Nile, unloaded at Thebes and set up in place 
at Karnak. It took a ship towed by thirty tugs, 
each with thirty-two oarsmen, 960 oarsmen in all, 
to do the work of transportation. 

Then there are the Memnon Colossi at Thebes, 
each seventy feet high, and each weighing 700 
tons, solid blocks of sandstone, which were trans- 
ported seventy miles down the river, or one may 
think of the great statue of Rameses II at the 
Rameseum which weigh 1,000 tons, or again of 
the great pyramids and the monster monoliths 
used in their construction. How were these great 
stones quarried, and how were they transported ? 
Then there are the palaces carved out of solid 
rock. What works of engineering and architec- 
tural skill! 

Some of the tools used by these ancient archi- 
tects and engineers are most interesting. Some of 
them used stone saws with almost invisible teeth 
—fifty to the inch. A bronze saw has been found, 
nine feet long, with jewelled cutting points, and 
diamond drills were used which could cut into 
crystal, quartz, and felspar with perfect ease. 

The scientist, too, looks to the ancient Orient 
for the beginnings of his profession. The Baby- 
lonians were the great astronomers of the an- 
cient world. They constructed our calendar and 
divided our time into months, our days into 
hours, hours into minutes, and minutes into 
seconds. When one looks at his watch he is be- 
holding the science of ancient Babylon, the 


Our Interest in the Past 9] 


sexagesimal system is of Sumerian origin. The 
naming of the planets is Babylonian, and the 
whole system of modern astronomy goes back in 
origin to the star-gazers and heaven-worshippers 
of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. 

Egyptians measured time by means of a simple 
sun-dial consisting of two pieces of crossed board, 
one piece of which cast a shadow upon the other. 
They were the great geometricians, one of the 
most interesting of whose papyri is one contain- 
ing the famous pons asinorwn, worked out much 
as a modern schoolboy would work it out. But the 
Babylonians excelled in work on fractions, al- 
though Egyptian mathematicians were not far 
behind. 

The art of medicine was highly developed in 
both countries. Campbell Thompson has recently 
published a great Assyrian Herbal in which he 
shows how proficient the Assyrian doctor was in 
his knowledge of herbs and how wonderfully he 
made use of that knowledge. Babylonian, As- 
syrian, and Egyptian physicians made scientific 
diagnoses and prescribed with a great deal of 
knowledge and accompanying success. Assafoe- 
tida, for example, was well known to Assyrian 
physicians and used in a scientific manner. 

Sufficient has perhaps already been said to 
show how much there is in antiquity to interest 
the lawyer. Those fascinating legal contracts of 
Sumeria and Babylonia, drawn up in their pre- 
cise legal way, signed and sworn to before judges 


92 Forgotten Empires 


and witnesses, and in the name of the gods, are 
full of legal interest. Then there are the great 
codes of law, such as that of Hammurabi, the As- 
syrian, and the Hittite codes. The lifting up of 
the hand in taking an oath, the legal phraseology, 
the marriage, and commercial contracts all have 
innumerable points which the lawyer would find 
of great value in his study of the history of law. 

The student of language and literature will 
find in the reconstruction of ancient Oriental 
languages and literatures endless’ material of in- 
terest. The history of our own alphabet takes us 
back through Rome, Greece, and Phoenicia to an- 
cient Egypt. When we look at those signs which 
we call A, B, ete., we are looking upon the work 
of ancient Egyptian students of language. As for 
literature, the contacts are endless. Whether it 
be prose or poetry, legend or myth, history or 
biography, essay or prophecy, ethics or philos- 
ophy, drama or epic, our research into their 
origin and development will lead us back to the 
Tale of Sinuhe or Poem of Pentaur, the Legend 
of Etana or the Myth of the Descent of Ishtar to 
Hades, the History of Esarhaddon or the Biogra- 
phy of Uni, the Proverbs of Amen-em-ope or the 
Prophecy of Ipuwer, the Precepts of Ptah-hotep 
or the Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, the 
Epic of Gilgamesh or the Babylonian Job. What 
romance and poetry, what tragedy and comedy 
to be found in these ancient writings. Space does 
not permit a detailed account of the nature and 


Our Interest in the Past 93 


extent of ancient Oriental languages and litera. 
tures. The field is a fascinating one, and one 
which fairly bristles with unsolved problems and 
unanswered questions. There is room for untold 
adventure into unknown continents of fascinating 
discovery. 

And as far as the student of religion is con- 
cerned, Sumeria, Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, and 
the lands of the Hittites are his happy hunting 
grounds. Christianity is largely, in origin and 
development, an Oriental religion. There is not a 
doctrine nor a point of ritual which may not find 
its counterpart in ancient Oriental religions. 
Our idea of God and of man, our systems of wor- 
ship, our churches and chapels, our ministry and 
priesthoods, our sacred music and our ritual acts 
are all Oriental in type. In short, not only are our 
theology, morals, and rites Oriental in origin and 
character, but the very head and centre of Chris- 
tianity, the world’s greatest prophet, man’s Re- 
deemer, man’s Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ 
Himself, was born of Mary the Virgin, conceived 
of the Holy Ghost, and fostered by Joseph in 
Bethlehem of Judea, in Galilee of the Nations, in 
Oriental Palestine, the Holy Land of the three 
greatest religions—all three Oriental—Judaism, 
Christianity, and Islam. 

The world’s greatest jewel, greatest miracle is 
God’s handiwork, human personality. The student 
of human nature, of human character, the psych- 
ologist, the humanitarian, the philosopher can 





Forgotten Empires 





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Our Interest in the Past 


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96 Forgotten Empires 


find material in the ancient Orient to his heart’s 
content. When shall we ever be able successfully 
to analyze the personalities of Ptah-hotep, the 
great Egyptian sage of the Middle Kingdom, of 
Hammurabi, the great law-giver of Babylon, of 
Thutmose III, the Napoleon of Kgypt, of Hat- 
shepsut, the first great woman, of Semiramis, the 
queenly Oriental, of Ikhnaton, the great reformer, 
of thousands of other personalities which crowd 
the stage of Oriental history? 

These are some of the reasons-why we are in- 
terested in the recovery of forgotten empires. 
They are not the only ones. But perhaps they are 
sufficient to show something of the adventure, of 
the fascination and romance there is in the work 
of exploring, excavating, deciphering, recon- 
structing, and coérdinating the life and thought, 
the culture and civilization of the ancient 
Orient. 


VII. BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 


In this brief bibliography emphasis has been 
placed upon brevity and accessibility. It is for 
the latter reason that only books in English have 
been included. Two classes of readers have been 
kept in mind: First of all, the general reader who 
may want to read further into the fascinating 
work of the recovery of forgotten empires, and, 
secondly, those readers who may become aimbi- 
tious enough to desire to make a start with some 
one or other of the ancient Oriental languages. 
It is for this second class that the names of a few 
linguistic books have been added. 


Chapter I. Introduction. 

J. Baikie, The Life of the Ancient East (especially 
Chapter I). London: A. & C. Black. 1923. 

W. M. Flinders Petrie, Ten Years’ Digging in Egypt 
(especially Chapter XII). London: The Religious 
Tract Society. 1923. 

Chapter II. Excavations and their Romance. 

J. Baikie, The Romance of Excavations. London: A. & 
C. Black. 1924. 

H. V. Hilprecht, Recent Research in Bible Lands. 
Philadelphia: Wattles & Co. 1897. 

P. 8S. P. Handcock, Mesopotamian Archaeology, Lon- 
don: Macmillan & Co. 1912. 


98 


Forgotten Empires 


J. Baikie, A Century of Excavation in the Land of the 


Pharaohs. London: Religious Tract Society. 1923. 


Chapter III. Decipherment of Inscriptions. 


Ri 


W. Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria 
(especially the first chapters of the first volume), 
Vols, I-II. New York: Abingdon Press. 1915. 


Samuel A. B. Mercer, Sumero-Babylonian Sign List. 


C. 


W. 


New York: Columbia University Press. 1918. 

J. Gadd, A Sumerian Reading-Book. Oxford: 
Clarendon Press. 1924. 

Muss-Arnolt, Assyrian-English Dictionary. New 
York: Lemecke & Buechner. 1905. 


Samuel A. B. Mercer, Assyrian Grammar. London: 


BE. 


Luzac & Co. 1921. 
A. Wallis Budge, An Egyptian Grammar, London: 
John Murray. 1920. 


Mercer-Roeder, Hgyptian Grammar. New Haven: 


iA, 


Yale University Press. 1920. 
EK. Cowley, The Hittites. London: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press. 1920. 


Chapter IV. Reconstruction of Ancient Civilization. 


iW} 


L. 


A. 


M. 


W. King, A History of Sumer and Akkad. New 
York: Stokes & Co., n.d. 

W. King, A History of Babylonia. London: Chatto 
& Windus. 1915. 

T. Olmstead, History of Assyria. New York: 
Scribner’s Sons. 1928. 

H. Breasted, A History of Egypt. New York: 
Scribner’s Sons. 1915. 


. Jastrow, The Civilization of Babylonia and As- 


syria. Philadelphia : Lippincott Co. 1915. 

Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt. London: Macmillan 
Co. 1894. 

Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Beliefs and Prac- 
tices in Babylonia and Assyria. New York: Put- 
man’s Sons. 1911. 


Bibliography 99 


J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought 
in Ancient Egypt. New York: Scribner’s Sons. 
1912. 

Samuel A. B. Mercer, Religious and Moral Ideas in 
Babylonia and Assyria. Milwaukee: Morehouse. 
1919. 

Samuel A. B. Mercer, Growth of Religious and Moral 
Ideas in Egypt. Milwaukee: Morehouse. 1919. 

D. A. Mackenzie, Myths of Babylonia and Assyria. 
London: Gresham Pub. Co. n. d. 

D. A. Mackenzie, Egyptian Myths and Legends. Lon- 
don: Gresham Pub. Co. n. d. 

W. M. Flinders Petrie, Social Life in Ancient Egypt. 
London: Constable & Co. 1928. 

R. F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Literature. 
New York: Appleton & Co. 1901. 

G. Maspero, Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt. New 
York: Putnam’s Sons. 1915. 

BE. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead. London: 
Kegan Paul, 1910. 

Chapter V. Coédrdination of the Civilization of Ancient 
Empires. 

G. Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization in Egypt and 
Chaldaea. London: 8. P. C. K. 1912.. 

Samuel A. B. Mercer, Extra-Biblical Sources for He- 
brew and Jewish History. New York: Longmans. 
1913. 

Bury, Cook, Adeock, The Cambridge Ancient History, 
VOber to 1080, BO. 0a ros 000 -B:-C.Cam- 
bridge University Press. 1923, 1924. 

Chapter VI. Our Interest in the Past. 

R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testa- 
ment. New York: Eaton & Maine. 1912. 

G. A. Barton, Archaeology and the Bible. Philadelphia : 
American Sunday-School Union. 1925. 

J. M. Price, The Monuments and the Old Testament. 
Philadelphia: The Judson Press. 1925. 


100 Forgotten Empires 


Samuel A. B. Mercer, Tutankhamen and Egyptology. 
Milwaukee: Morehouse. 1923. 

G. Maspero, Art in Egypt. London: Heinemann. 1912. 

Ed. Bell, The Architecture of Ancient Egypt. Won- 
don: Bell & Sons. 1915. 

C. H. W. Johns, Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Con- 
tracts, and Letters. New York: Scribner’s Sons. 
1904. 


ORIENTAL WOLD 
‘ AMD SEIGMHORING EY ROPe : 
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VII. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND 
DESCRIPTIONS 


1. Austen Henry Layard was born in Paris, March 8, 
1817. He died in London, July 5, 1894. He was a great 
explorer and excavator in the field of Assyriology. 
Ernest de Sarzec was born in 1886 and died in June, 
1901, in Poiters, France. He excavated Lagash (Tello). 
Georg Friedrich Grotefend was born near Cassel, Ger- 
many, June 9, 1775, and died at Hannover, December 15, 
1853. His labours on the decipherment of the Cuneiform 
is found in his work, ‘‘Neue Beitriige zur Erliiuterung der 
persepolitanischen Keilschrift” (1837). Henry C. Raw- 
linson was born in Chadlington, England, April 11, 1810, 
and died in London, March 5, 1895, He excavated, copied, 
and deciphered Cuneiform texts. He has been called the 
British father of Assyriology. Edward Hincks was born 
in Cork, Ireland, in 1792, and died at Killyleagh, Decem- 
ber 38, 1866. He contributed effectively to the decipher- 
ment of the Cuneiform inscriptions. Jules Oppert was 
born in Hamburg, July 9, 1825, and died in Paris, August 
31, 1905. He was a successful excavator, and found many 
inscriptions at Birs Nimrud near Babylon. George 
Smith was born in England, March 26, 1840, and died 
at Aleppo, August 19, 1876. In 1872 he discovered the 
Babylonian account of the flood. He excavated Nineveh. 
John Henry Haynes was born June 27, 1849, and died 
in North Adams, Mass., June 29, 1910. He was in charge 
of the American expedition at Nippur in 1893-1896, 
when 21,000 Cuneiform tablets were discovered. 


102 Forgotten Empires 


2. Jean Francois Champollion was born at Figeac, 
France, December 23, 1790, and died in Paris March 4, 
1832. In 1824 Champollion published the results of his 
labours which show him to have been the discoverer of 
the key to the Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Gaston Camille 
Maspero was born in Paris, June 24, 1846, and died in 
Paris, June, 1916. He succeeded Mariette as director of 
the Museum in Cairo. His most interesting work was 
the publication and translation of the Pyramid Texts. 
Hugo Winckler was born on July 4, 1863, at Graefen- 
hainichen, Germany, and died in Berlin, April 10, 1915. 
In 1906 he discovered a great number of Hittite inscrip- 
tions written in Cuneiform. Archibald Henry Sayce was 
born at Shirehampton, England, September 25, 1846. He 
has contributed much not only to Assyriology and 
Egyptology, but also towards the decipherment of the 
Hittite Hieroglyphs. 

3. This illustration shows that the later cuneiform 
developed out of an early pictographiec script. 

4. This is an excerpt from the Behistun trilingual 
inscription which proved to be the key to the decipher- 
ment of the cuneiform. 

5. This picture shows the three classes of cuneiform 
characters found on the Behistun inscription. The top 
and bottom section are Old Persian; the second is Baby- 
lonian-Assyrian; and the third is Elamitic. 

6. These two cartouches became, in the hands of 
Champollion, the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

7. The above cartouches were found on the Rosetta 
Stone. The stone is a piece of black basalt inscribed in 
hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek characters. 

8. This is an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphs. 
This script has not yet been satisfactorily deciphered. 
Note that the top line reads from right to left; the sec- 
ond line from left to right; and the third line from right 
to left again. 

9. Gudea reigned in Lagash (Tello), Babylonia, about 


Illustrations 103 


2450 B.C. He was one of the greatest builders in the 
ancient world. 

10. Sennacherib attacked Jerusalem in 701, but was 
obliged to return to Assyria before reducing the city. 

11. Ashurbanipal was king of Assyria, 668-626 B.C. 
It is the great library of Ashurbanipal's palace, portions 
of which were discovered at Kuyunjik, which is the 
source of a large part of our knowledge of ancient As- 
syria and Babylonia. 

12. This is a picture of the restoration of the great 
temple of Anu, the sky-god, in Ashur, the capital of As- 
syria. Note the two great stage towers, some of which 
had seven stages. 

13. Nebuchadnezzar was the greatest of the kings of 
the Neo-Babylonian empire. He destroyed Jerusalem in 
586 B.C. 

14. This is an idealized reconstruction of the great 
city of Babylon. Note the great seven-staged temple. 

15. Rameses II, 1292-1225, was most likely the 
“Pharaoh of the Oppression.” 

16. Ikhnaton reigned in Egypt from 1875 to 1368 B.C. 
He is known as the “heretic pharaoh,” because he intro- 
duced a form of sun-worship distasteful to the worship- 
pers of Amon of Thebes. He has been called the “first 
monotheist,” but the title is rather fanciful. 

17. Tutankhamen is now well known. He married one 
of Ikhnaton’s daughters. This fine portrait statue is in 
the Cairo Museum. 

18. These are fragments of the Babylonian accounts 
of Creation and the Flood. They are in the British 
Museum. 

19. This is a Mohammedan tower at Samarra on the 
Tigris, and illustrates the ancient “Tower of Babel” 
structures. 

20. Here we see the mummy of Rameses II. It is now 
in the Cairo Museum. 


104 Forgotten Empires 


21. The son and successor of Rameses II was Mer- 
neptah. In a hymn of victory inscribed on this stela 
the name of “Israel” occurs. 


22. This is the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 
860-825 B.C. It is now in the British Museum. The sec- 
ond relief from the top, at the right, represents the As- 
syrian king receiving the submission of Jehu. 


23. The Moabite Stone commemorates the success of 
Mesha, king of Moab, against Israel. It was discovered 
in 1868, and is now in the Louvre. 

24. The top tablet is a Tell el-Amarna letter. These 
letters, discovered in Egypt in 1888, are a portion of the 
correspondence which passed between the Egyptian kings 
and certain Asiatic princes and kings during the four- 
teenth century B.C. Many of them deal with Palestine. 
The round tablet contains a list of fields with measure- 
ments and statistics. The third tablet is a deed reecord- 
ing the sale of land. 


25. This picture shows the magnitude of some of the 
pillars in the temple of Amon at Karnak. Note the man 
standing beside one of the columns. 

26. This gives a glimpse of the nave of the great 
temple at Karnak. Note the obelisk. 

27. One of the finest works of art in the world was 
dedicated by Entemena (about 2900 B.C.), king of 
Lagash, to his god, Ningirsu. 

28. These cherubim, winged and human-headed lions, 
guarded the doors of palaces and temples in Assyria. 

29. Among the exquisite works of art found in the 
tomb chambers of Tutankhamen, none is finer than this 
beautiful miniature, which forms one end of one of 
Tutankhamen’s boxes. 

30. The Code of Hammurabi, discovered in 1901, and 
_ how in the Louvre, was compiled about 2000 B.C. The 


picture shows the first eight columns of this remarkable 
inscription, 


Illustrations 105 


31. Only a few years ago it was discovered that the 
Assyrians also had their great law codes. The picture 
shows a portion of such a code of laws. 

32-33. In Egyptian theology, ideas about the future 
world were highly developed. This picture represents the 
judgment after death. It is taken from an illuminated 
papyrus, now in the British Museum. 

34. This map gives one an idea of what is sometimes 
called the Biblical World. It shows Palestine and Syria, 
the high road of the great empires, Egypt, Babylonia, 
and the Lands of the Hittites. 





INDEX 


A D 
Abydos, 12. De Morgan, 14. 
Akerblad, 32. Demotie, 22. 
Amélineau, 14. Denon, 11. 
Anquetil-Duperron, 24. Der el Bahari, 15. 
Archaeology, 1 ff. De Sacy, 25, 32. 
Architect, 79. 
Art, 81 ff. E 


Ansnapper, 9. 


Assyria, 56 Egyptians, 54 f. 
~ nn ’ . 


Elephantiné, 15. 
Engineering, 48, 88 ff. 


B Erech, 9. 
Babylonians, 55 f. Excavations, 6 ff. 
Belzoni, 12. Exodus, 64 ff. 
Bible, 76 ff. 

Boghazk6i, 16. K 


Botta, 6 f. 
Burehardt, 15. 


= Flandin, 7. 
Business, 77 f. 


Fresnel, 9. 


Gizeh, 17. 


Calah, 7 f. Grotefend, 25. 


Champollion, 6, 12, 30 ff. 
Chardin, 23. 


Chronology, 40. H 
Commerce, 47 f. Hammurabi Code, 11. 
Cowley, 33 f. Hatshepsut, 13. 


Cuneiform, 21. Hattushil, 61. 


108 Forgotten Empires 


Herodotus, 2. 

Hieratiec, 21. 

Hincks, 28 f. 

History, 46 f. 

Hittites, 15 if., 33 f., 37, 56 

iL.) Cows. 
Hrozny, 16, 33. 
Hyksos, 61 f. 


I 
Israel Stela, 14. 


J 
Jehu, 8. 


Kaempfer, 25. 


Labyrinth, 14. 

Larsa, 9. 

Lassen, 26. 

Law; 46 f., 69, 91 f. 
Layard, 7 ff. 

Lepsius, 12. 

Literature, 48 f., 69 ff., 92 f. 
Loftus, 9. 

Loret, 13. 


M 
Mariette, 12. 
Maspero, 18. 
‘Medicine, 91. 
Menes, 60. 
Monotheism, 66 ff. 


Morals, 68. 
Miinter, 24. 

N 
Nabonidus, 1. 
Napoleon, 11. 
Naram-Sin, 60. 
Naville, 14. 
Nebuchadnezzar, 9 f. 
Niebuhr, 5, 23 f. 
Nimrud, 8. 


Oppert, 9. 


js 


Palermo Stone, 41. 
Pantheons, 45. 
Persepolis, 22. 
Petrie, 13 f. 
Philae, 81. 

Place, 7%. 

Pyramid Texts, 13. 


R 


Rameses II, 18. 
Rask, 26. 
Rawlinson, 6, 27 ff. 
Reisner, 13. 
Religion, 45 ff., 93. 
Rossellini, 12. 
Rosetta Stone, 30. 


S 
Sargon II, 7. 
Sayce, 33. 


Science, 50, 90 f. 
Serapeum, 12. 
Seti I, 86. 
Sumerians, 52 f. 


i 


Talbot, 29. 
Taylor, 10. 


Tellel-Amarna Letters, 14. 


Tomb of Osiris, 15. 
Tower of Babel, 9. 
Tutankhamen, 8) f. 
Tychsen, 5, 24. 


Index 


U 
rea): 


W 


Winckler, 16, 33. 


Wright, 15. 
a’ 


Young, 32. 


Zoega, 30. 


109 


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THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
BY 
MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO, 
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